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COLLECTION 

OF 

BRITISH AUTHORS 

TAUCHMTZ EDITION. 

VOL. 1533. 
ON ACTORS AND THE AET OF ACTING 

BY 

GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 

IN ONE VOLUME. 



TATJCHNITZ EDITION. 

By the same Author: 

RANTHORPE 1 vol. 

PHYSIOLOGY OF COMMON LIFE . . 2 vols. 



\ 



ON ACTORS 



AND 



THE ART OF ACTING 



GEORGE HENRY EEWES. 



COPYRIGHT EDITION. 



LEIPZIG 
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 

1875. 
The Riglit 0/ Translation is reserved. 



llial?^ 



Br Transfer 
JUM 5 1907 



! 



'^sl* 



I I 

I 7 

V 

EPISTLE TO ANTrMttY TROLLOPE. 



My dear Trollope, 
One reason for inscribing this trifle to you is 
that years ago you expressed a wish to see some 
dramatic criticisms which had interested you re- 
published in a more accessible form than the pages 
of a periodical. The reasons which have always 
deterred me from republishing articles written for 
a temporary purpose have not lost their force; and 
if I here weave together several detached papers 
into a small volume, it is because a temporary 
purpose may again be served now a change seems 
coming over the state of the stage, and there are 
signs of a revival of the once- splendid art of the 
actor. To effect this revival there must be not 
only accomplished artists and an eager public; 
there must be a more enlightened public. The 
critical pit, filled with playgoers who were familiar 
with fine acting and had trained judgments, has 
disappeared. In its place there is a mass of 



O EPISTLE TO ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 

amusement-seekers, not without a nucleus of in- 
telligent spectators, but of this nucleus only a small 
minority has very accurate ideas of what constitutes 
good art. 

The performances of Salvini this summer, while 
reawakening my slumbering interest in the stage, 
recalling the fine raptures of bygone years, have 
also, by the discussions to which they have led, 
made me sensible of the chaotic state of opinion 
on the subject of acting in many minds of rare 
intelligence. I have heard those for whose opinions 
in other directions my respect is great utter judg- 
ments on this subject which proved that they had 
not even a suspicion of what the Art of Acting 
really is. Whether they blamed or praised, the 
grounds which they advanced for praise and blame 
were often questionable. Every reader will admit 
that, without knowing anything of the Art of Paint- 
ing, each visitor at the Exhibition is at perfect 
liberty to express his admiration or dislike of any 
picture, so long as he confines himself to the ex- 
pression of a personal feeling, and says, "This 
pleases — this displeases me." But it is preposterous 
(though exceedingly common) for one who has 
never qualified himself by a study of the conditions 
and demands of the Art to formulate his personal 
feeling in a critical judgment, and say, "This is a 



EPISTLE TO ANTHONY TROLLOPE. "J 

fine picture; this painter is quite second-rate." 
Equally preposterous may be the estimate of an 
actor on the part of those who have not studied 
the Art. 

It is noticeable that people generally overrate a 
fine actor's genius, and underrate his trained skill. 
They are apt to credit him with a power of in- 
tellectual conception and poetic creation to which 
he has really a very slight claim, and fail to 
recognise all the difficulties which his artistic train- 
ing has enabled him to master. The ordinary 
spectator is moved, but is incapable of discriminat- 
ing the sources of his emotion: he identifies the 
actor with the character, and assigns to the actor's 
genius the effect mainly due to the dramatist. Nor 
is this illusion dispelled when, on some other 
occasion, this same actor leaves him. quite unmoved 
by a representation of similar passions not rendered 
aesthetically truthful by the dramatist. Thousands 
have been moved by performers in Hamlet, whose 
acting in other characters has excited indifference 
or contempt. The fact that no actor has been 
known utterly to fail in Hamlet, while failures in 
Shylock and Othello are numerous, is very in- 
structive. I remember when the German company 
played "Faust" at the St. James's Theatre, the 
sudden illness of the tragedian who was to have 



8 EPISTLE TO ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 

played Mephistopheles caused the part to be handed 
over to a fourth-rate member of the troupe who 
knew the part; yet although the performance was a 
very poor example of the Art, the interest excited 
by the character was so great that the public and 
the critics were delighted. It is the incalculable 
advantage of the actor that he stands in the suf- 
fused light of emotion kindled by the author. He 
speaks the great thoughts of an impassioned mind, 
and is rewarded, as the bearer of glad tidings is 
rewarded though he have had nothing to do with 
the facts which he narrates. 

Another general misconception is that there is 
no special physique nor any special training ne- 
cessary to make an actor. Almost every young 
person imagines he could act, if he tried. There 
is a story of some one who, on being asked if he 
could play the violin, answered, "I don't know; I 
never tried." This is the ordinary view of acting. 
The answer should have been, "No, I cannot play 
because I never tried." Violin-playing and acting 
do not come by nature. Nor is it any argument 
that Private Theatricals (a very pleasant amuse- 
ment — for the performers) often reveals a certain 
amount of histrionic aptitude in people who have 
never been trained. In the first place, the amateur 
is always a copy of some actors he has seen. In 



EPISTLE TO ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 9 

the next place, amateur acting bears the same 
relation to the art of the stage as drawing-room 
singing bears to the opera. We often listen with 
pleasure to a singer in private whom we should 
mercilessly hiss from the concert-room or stage. 

The non-recognition of the difficulties of the 
Art arises from a non-recognition of the conditions 
under which the artist produces his effects. We 
must know what are the demands and limitations 
of scenic presentation before we can decide whether 
the actor has shown skill. Ignorance of these 
sustains the current confusions respecting natural 
acting. Ignorance of these assigns excellences or 
deficiencies to the actor's mind, when in reality 
they depend solely on his means of physical ex- 
pression. If there is no pathos in the tones, the 
actor's soul may be a sob, yet we shall remain 
unmoved. The poet, who felt that pathos when 
he wrote, would probably be ridiculous were he in 
the actor's place, and tried to give expression to 
the feeling. 

But I must not be seduced into a dissertation. 
I only wanted to indicate that the object of here 
reprinting remarks, made at various times and in 
various periodicals, is to call upon the reflective 
part of the public to make some attempt at dis- 
criminating the sources of theatrical emotion. I 



10 EPISTLE TO ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 

want to direct attention not simply to the fact that 
Acting is an Art, but that, like all other Arts, it is 
obstructed by a mass of unsystematised opinion, 
calling itself criticism. 

You will understand how there must necessarily 
be repetitions, in articles written on the same sub- 
ject at widely different periods; and how the treat- 
ment of each subject can never pretend to be 
exhaustive in periodical papers. Let me, in con- 
clusion, add that they were written during a period 
of dramatic degradation. The poetic drama had 
vanished with Macready and Helen Faucit, and its 
day seemed, to many, a day which would never 
recur. With 'Hamlet' and 'Othello' drawing 
enthusiastic crowds during a long season, and with 
a play by Tennyson promised for the next, the day, 
let us hope, has once more dawned! 

Ever yours affectionately, 

G. H. LEWES. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 


Edmund Kean 








— 


II. 


Charles Kean 










- 


III. 


Rachel . 










- 


IV. 


Macready 










— 


V. 


Farren . 










— 


VI. 


Charles Mathews 










— 


VII. 


Frederic Lemaitre 










— 


VIII. 


The two Keeleys 










— 


IX. 


Shakspeare as Actor and Crit 


ic 




- 


X. 


On Natural Acting 






- 


XI. 


Foreign Actors on our Stage . 






— 


XII. 


The Drama in Paris. 1865 . 






- 


XIII. 


The Drama in Germany. 1867 




— 


XIV. 


The Drama in Spain. 1867 . 




— 


XV. 


First Impressions 


fSah 


ini. 


187S 





Page 
13 

24 
35 
44 
63 
7i 
84 

9i 
99 
119 

135 
184 
218 

239 
266 



ON ACTORS 

AND 

THE ART OF ACTING. 



CHAPTER I. 

Edmund Kean. 

The greatest artist is he who is greatest in the 
highest reaches of his art, even although he may 
lack the qualities necessary for the adequate execu- 
tion of some minor details. It is not by his faults, 
but by his excellences, that we measure a great 
man. The strength of a beam is measured by its 
weakest part, of a man by his strongest. Thus 
estimated, Edmund Kean was incomparably the 
greatest actor I have seen, although even warm ad- 
mirers must admit that he had many and serious 
defects. His was not a flexible genius. He was a 
very imperfect mime — or more correctly speaking, 
his miming power, though admirable within a certain 



14 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

range, was singularly limited in its range. He was 
tricky and flashy in style. But he was an actor of 
such splendid endowments in the highest depart- 
ments of the art, that no one in our day can be 
named of equal rank, unless it be Rachel, who was 
as a woman what he was as a man. The irregular 
splendour of his power was felicitously characterised 
in the saying of Coleridge, that "seeing Kean act 
was reading Shakspeare by flashes of lightning," so 
brilliant and so startling were the sudden illumina- 
tions, and so murky the dull intervals. Critics who 
had formed their ideal on the Kemble school were 
shocked at Kean's want of dignity, and at his fitful 
elocution, sometimes thrillingly effective, at other 
times deplorably tame and careless; in their angry 
protests they went so far as to declare him "a mere 
mountebank." Not so thought the pit; not so 
thought less biassed critics. He stirred the general 
heart with such a rush of mighty power, impressed 
himself so vividly by accent, look, and gesture, that 
it was as vain to protest against his defects as it 
was for French critics to insist upon Shakspeare's 
want of biensiance and bon goiit. Could audiences 
have remained unmoved, they might have lent a 
willing ear to remonstrances, and laughed at or 
hissed some grave offences against taste and sense. 
But no audience could be unmoved; all defects were 



EDMUND KEAN. I 5 

overlooked or disregarded, because it was impos- 
sible to watch Kean as Othello, Shylock, Richard, 
or Sir Giles Overreach without being strangely 
shaken by the terror, and the pathos, and the passion 
of a stormy spirit uttering itself in tones of irre- 
sistible power. His imitators have been mostly 
ridiculous, simply because they reproduced the 
manner and the mannerism, but could not repro- 
duce the power which made these endurable. It is 
a fact little understood by imitators that the spots 
on the sun in nowise warm the world, and that a 
deficiency in light and heat cannot be replaced by 
a prodigality of spots. 

Although I was a little boy when I first saw 
Kean, in 1825, and but a youth when, in 1832, he 
quitted the stage for ever, yet so ineffaceable are 
the impressions his acting produced, that I feel far 
more at ease in speaking of his excellences and 
defects than I should feel in speaking of many 
actors seen only a dozen years ago. It will be 
understood that I was in no condition then to form 
an estimate of his qualities, and that I criticise from 
memory. Yet my memory of him is so vivid that 
I see his looks and gestures and hear his thrilling 
voice as if these were sensations of yesterday. Per- 
haps the defects which I now recognise would be 
more salient were I now to witness the performances. 



1 6 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

There is a softening, idealizing tendency in memory 
which may exaggerate the degree of excellence. 
Still these are only matters of degree; and I think 
that my appreciation of the actor is on the whole 
little disturbed by such influences. At any rate I 
will try to set down fairly what a retrospect dis- 
closes. 

Kean's range of expression, as already hinted, 
was very limited. His physical aptitudes were such 
as confined him to the strictly tragic passions; and 
for these he was magnificently endowed. Small and 
insignificant in figure, he could at times become im- 
pressively commanding by the lion-like power and 
grace of his bearing. I remember, the last time I 
saw him play Othello, how puny he appeared beside 
Macready, until in the third act, when roused by 
Iago's taunts and insinuations, he moved towards 
him with a gouty hobble, seized him by the throat, 
and, in a well-known explosion, "Villain! be sure 
you prove," &c, seemed to swell into a stature 
which made Macready appear small. On that very 
evening, when gout made it difficult for him to dis- 
play his accustomed grace, when a drunken hoarse- 
ness had ruined the once matchless voice, such was 
the irresistible pathos — manly, not tearful — which 
vibrated in his tones and expressed itself in look 
and gestures, that old men leaned their heads upon 



EDMUND KEAN. 1 7 

their arms and fairly sobbed. It was, one must 
confess, a patchy performance considered as a 
whole; some parts were miserably tricky, others 
misconceived, others gabbled over in haste to reach 
the "points"; but it was irradiated with such 
flashes that I would again risk broken ribs for the 
chance of a good place in the pit to see anything 
like it. 

Even in earlier and better days there was much 
in his performance of Othello which was spasmodic, 
slovenly, false. The address to the Senate was very 
bad. He had little power of elocution unless when 
sustained by a strong emotion; and this long simple 
narrative was the kind of speech he could not 
manage at all. He gabbled over it, impatient to 
arrive at the phrase "And this is all the witchcraft 
I have used. Here comes the lady, let her witness 
it." His delivery of this "point" always startled 
the audience into applause by its incisive tone and 
its abrupt transition; yet nothing could be more out 
of keeping with the Shakspearian character. Othello 
might smile with lofty disdain at the accusation of 
witchcraft, or rebut it calmly, but not make it the 
climax of a withering sarcasm — attacking the word 
"witchcraft" with high and sudden emphasis, and 
dropping into an almost disrespectful colloquialism 
as the lady appeared. Indeed, throughout the first 

Actors and Acting. 2 



I 8 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

and second acts, with the exception of occasional 
flashes (as in the passionate fervour with which he 
greets Desdemona on landing at Cyprus), Kean's 
Othello was rather irritating and disappointing — ar- 
resting the mind but not satisfying it. From the 
third act onwards all was wrought out with a mas- 
tery over the resources of expression such as has 
been seldom approached. In the successive un- 
folding of these great scenes he represented -with 
incomparable effect the lion-like fury, the deep and 
haggard pathos, the forlorn sense of desolation 
alternating with gusts of stormy cries for vengeance, 
the misgivings and sudden reassurances, the calm 
and deadly resolution of one not easily moved, 
but who, being moved, was stirred to the very 
depths. 

Kean was a consummate master of passionate 
expression. People generally spoke of him as a type 
of the "impulsive actor." But if by this they meant 
one who abandoned himself to the impulse of the 
moment without forethought of pre-arranged effect, 
nothing could be wider from the mark. He was 
an artist, and in Art all effects are regulated. The 
original suggestion may be, and generally is, sudden 
and unprepared — "inspired," as we say; but the 
alert intellect recognises its truth, seizes on it, re- 
gulates it. Without nice calculation no proportion 



EDMUND KEAN. 1 9 

could be preserved; we should have a work of fitful 
impulse, not a work of enduring Art. Kean vigilantly 
and patiently rehearsed every detail, trying the tones 
until his ear was satisfied, practising looks and 
gestures until his artistic sense was satisfied; and 
having once regulated these he never changed them. 
The consequence was that, when he was sufficiently 
sober to stand and speak, he could act his part 
with the precision of a singer who has thoroughly 
learned his air. One who often acted with him in- 
formed me that when Kean was rehearsing on a 
new stage he accurately counted the number of 
steps he had to take before reaching a certain spot, 
or before uttering a certain word; these steps were 
justly regarded by him as part of the mechanism 
which could no more be neglected than the accom- 
paniment to an air could be neglected by a singer. 
Hence it was that he was always the same; not al- 
ways in the same health, not always in the same 
vigour, but always master of the part, and expressing 
it through the same symbols. The voice on some 
nights would be more irresistibly touching in "But, 
oh! the pity of it, Iago!" — or more musically for- 
lorn in "Othello's occupation's gone" — or more 
terrible in "Blood; Iago; blood, blood!" but always 
the accent and rhythm were unchanged; as a 
Tamberlik may deliver the C from the chest with 



20 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

more sonority one night than another, but always 
delivers it from the chest and never from the 
head. 

Kean was not only remarkable for the intensity 
of passionate expression, but for a peculiarity I have 
never seen so thoroughly realised by another, al- 
though it is one which belongs to the truth of 
passion, namely, the expression of subsiding emotion. 
Although fond, far too fond, of abrupt transitions — 
passing from vehemence to familiarity, and mingling 
strong lights and shadows with Caravaggio force of 
unreality — nevertheless his instinct taught him what 
few actors are taught — that a strong emotion, after 
discharging itself in one massive current, continues 
for a time expressing itself in feebler currents. The 
waves are not stilled when the storm has passed 
away. There remains the ground- swell troubling 
the deeps. In watching Kean's quivering muscles 
and altered tones you felt the subsidence of passion. 
The voice might be calm, but there was a tremor 
in it; the face might be quiet, but there were 
vanishing traces of the recent agitation. 

One of his means of effect — sometimes one of 
his tricks — was to make long pauses between cer- 
tain phrases. For instance, on quitting the scene, 
Sir Edward Mortimer has to say warningly, "Wil- 



EDMUND KEAN. 2 1 

ford, remember!" Kean used to pause after "Wil- 
ford," and during the pause his face underwent a 
rapid succession of expressions fluently melting into 
each other, and all tending to one climax of threat; 
and then the deep tones of "remember!" came like 
muttered thunder. Those spectators who were un- 
able to catch these expressions considered the pause 
a mere trick; and sometimes the pauses were only- 
tricks, but often they were subtle truths. 

Having been trained to the stage from his 
childhood, and being endowed with a remarkably 
graceful person, he was a master of scenic effect. 
He largely increased the stock of "business," which 
is the tradition of the stage. Hamlet, Othello, 
Richard, Shylock, Lear, Sir Giles Overreach, or Sir 
Edward Mortimer have been illuminated by him in 
a way neither actors nor playgoers commonly 
suspect. It is his reading of the parts, his "points," 
that we applaud. He was a real innovator. But 
the parts he could play were few. He had no 
gaiety; he could not laugh; he had no playfulness 
that was not as the playfulness of a panther show- 
ing her claws every moment. Of this kind was the 
gaiety of his Richard III. Who can ever forget the 
exquisite grace with which he leaned against the 
side-scene while Anne was railing at him, and the 
chuckling mirth of his "Poor fool! what pains she 



22 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

takes to damn herself!" It was thoroughly feline 
— terrible yet beautiful. 

He had tenderness, wrath, agony, and sarcasm 
at command. But he could not be calmly digni- 
fied; nor could he represent the intellectual side of 
heroism. He was nothing if not passionate. I 
never saw his Hamlet which, however, was never 
considered one of his successes, though parts were 
intensely admired. He must have been puzzled 
what to do with many of the long speeches and the 
quiet scenes, and could have had no sympathy with 
the character. Yet Hamlet is the easiest of all 
Shakspeare's great parts for an actor of moderate 
ability. Othello, which is the most trying of all 
Shakspeare's parts, was Kean's masterpiece. His 
Shylock was freer from fault, and indeed was a 
marvellous performance. From the first moment 
that he appeared and leant upon his stick to listen 
gravely while moneys are requested of him, he im- 
pressed the audience, as Douglas Jerrold used to 
say, "like a chapter of Genesis." The overpower- 
ing remonstrant sarcasm of his address to Antonio, 
and the sardonic mirth of his proposition about 
the "merry bond," were fine preparations for the 
anguish and rage at the elopement of his daughter, 
and for the gloating anticipations of revenge on 
the Christians. Anything more impressive than the 



EDMUND KEAN. 2$ 

passionate recrimination and wild justice of argu- 
ment in his "Hath not a Jew eyes?" has never been 
seen on our stage. 



24 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 



CHAPTER II. 
Charles Kean. 

To speak of the son immediately after the father 
is not only to follow out a natural suggestion, but 
to seize an excellent opportunity of elucidating 
some characteristics of both. It may press a little 
hard upon Charles Kean, but from the first he has 
been subject to this overshadowing comparison. 
Like his father, he is an accomplished swordsman, 
and thorough master of all the business of the 
stage; like his father, he is endowed with great 
physical force, and is capable of abandoning him- 
self to the wildest expression of it without peril of 
a breakdown. Unlike his father, he is never care- 
less; he anxiously elaborates every scene to the ut- 
most in his power, never throwing a chance away, 
never failing except from lack of means. He is 
not only a respectable and respected member of his 
profession, he has the real artist's love of his art, 
and pride in it, and he always does his best. 
Laughed at, ridiculed, and hissed, and for many 



CHARLES KEAN. 2$ 

years terribly handled by critics, both in public and 
private, he has worked steadily, resolutely, improv- 
ingly, till his brave perseverance has finally con- 
quered an eminent position. He began by being 
a very bad actor; he has ended by forcing even 
such of his critics as have least sympathy with him 
to admit that in certain parts he is without a rival 
on our stage. This battle with the public he has 
fought by inches. Slowly the force that is in him, 
concentrated on the one object of his life, has 
made an actor out of very unpromising materials. 
His career is a lesson. It shows what can and 
what cannot be done by courageous devotion and 
a burning desire to learn the resources of an art. 
The stamping, spluttering, ranting, tricky actor, who 
in his "sallet days" excited so much mirth and so 
much blame, has become remarkable for the natural- 
ness and forcible quietness with which he plays 
certain parts. He is still unhappily given to rant 
when he has to express strong emotion; but rant is 
the resource of incompetence in all actors of tragic 
characters; and it is only on occasions of excite- 
ment that he falls into this mistake. On other oc- 
casions he is calm and forcible. 

I must confess that it has never been an intel- 
lectual treat to me to see Charles Kean play Shak- 
speare's tragic heroes, but I doubt whether even 



26 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

his great father could have surpassed him in cer- 
tain melodramatic parts. I am unable to speak of 
his Louis XI. — by many considered his finest per- 
formance — but I can easily believe that it was as 
superior to the representation of Ligier, on which 
it was modelled, as his performance of the Corsican 
Brothers was to that of Fechter, which also served 
him as a model. In the lighter scenes of the two 
first acts of the "Corsican Brothers" he wanted the 
graceful ease of Fechter; but in the more serious 
scenes, and throughout the third act, he surpassed 
the Frenchman with all the weight and intensity of 
a tragic actor in situations for which the comedian 
is unsuited. The deadly quiet of a strong nature 
nerved to a great catastrophe — the sombre, fatal, 
pitiless expression — could not have been more 
forcibly given than by Charles Kean in this act; 
and in the duel there was a stealthy intensity in 
every look and movement, which gave a shudder- 
ing fascination to the scenes altogether missed by 
Fechter. In "Pauline," also, Charles Kean showed 
similar power — quiet and terible. Both his qualities 
and defects conspired to make these performances 
singularly effective, and revealed a first-rate melo- 
dramatic actor where hitherto we had known only 
a bad tragedian. 

To some of my readers it may not be at first 



CHARLES KEAN. 2*] 

evident how an actor can be really great in melo- 
drame and weak in tragedy. Yet they will have no 
difficulty in understanding that a man may write 
admirable melodrames without even moderate suc- 
cess in attempting tragedies. The very qualities 
which ensure excellence in the one prepare the 
failure in the other. The tragic poet includes the 
melo dramatist. Strip "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" of 
their poetry and psychology, and you have a fine 
melodramatic residuum. Sophocles and Shakspeare 
are as "sensational" as Fitzball and Dumas; but 
the situations, which in the latter are the aim and 
object of the piece, to which all the rest is sub- 
ordinated, in the former are the mere starting- 
points, the nodes of dramatic action. A melo- 
dramatic actor is required to be impressive, to paint 
in broad, coarse outlines, to give relief to an ex- 
aggerated situation; he is not required to be poetic, 
subtle, true to human emotion; for the scene he 
presents and the language he speaks are removed 
into an unreal, unideal sphere, i.e. a sphere which 
is not that of reality nor of poetic idealism. 

No sooner does Charles Kean attempt one of 
Shakspeare's flexible and human characters than 
the inflexible nature of his talent places him in con- 
spicuous inferiority not only to his great father but 
to all fine actors. The fluency of Shakspeare's 



28 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

movements, the subtle interpenetration of thought 
and emotion, the tangled web of motives, the 
mingling of the heroic with the familiar, the pre- 
sence of constant verisimilitude under exceptional 
and exaggerated conditions, all demand great flexi- 
bility of conception and expression in the actor, 
great sympathy of imagination, nicety of observa- 
tion, and variety of mimetic power. In these Charles 
Kean is wholly deficient. He has the power of 
coarse painting, of impressive representation when 
the image to be presented is a simple one; but he 
has no subtlety of sympathy, no nicety of observa- 
tion, no variety of expression. He is peculiarly 
rigid — this is his force and his weakness: "he 
moveth altogether if he move at all." His face is 
utterly without physiognomical play; one stolid ex- 
pression, immovable as an ancient mask, is worn 
throughout a scene which demands fluctuating 
variety. He has none of those unforgettable looks 
which made his father terrible to fellow-actors no 
less than to spectators. There has never been the 
smallest danger of his frightening an actress into 
fits, as Edmund Kean is said to have frightened 
Mrs. Glover — a story I suspect to be somewhat 
mythical, but a story which indicates the mighty 
power of Kean's glare and the ghastly convulsion 
of his rage. 



CHARLES KEAN. 20, 

It is because there is no presence of poetry in 
his acting that we all feel Charles Kean to be es- 
sentially a melodramatic actor. The unreality and 
unideality of a melodrama are alike suited to his 
means. If he attempt to portray real emotion, he 
leaves us cold; if he attempt to indicate a subtle 
truth, it is done so clumsily and so completely from 
the outside conventional view that we are distressed. 
He has no sympathy with what is heroic. He wants 
nicety of observation and expression for what is 
real. 

Let us consider his voice, that being the actor's 
most potent instrument of expression. It is harsh 
and rasping; so, indeed, was the voice of his father 
in its upper range (though less so), but in its lower 
range it was marvellously musical, and had tones 
of a searching pathos never heard since. Partly 
because of the voice which is inflexible, but mainly 
because of an insensibility to rhythmic modulation, 
Charles Kean cannot deliever a passage with musical 
effect. The stubborn harshness of the voice, and 
the mechanicalness of his elocution, spoil even his 
best efforts. The tones of his father vibrate still in 
the memories of those who years ago trembled de- 
liciously beneath their influence; and render even 
pathetic phrases powerless when spoken by his suc- 
cessors, because the successors cannot utter them 



SO ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

with such "ravishing division." When Charles Kean 
as Richard delivers the speech — 

Now is the winter of our discontent 

no one notices it; but who can ever forget his 
father's look and voice? Who can forget the thrill- 
ing effect of the rich deep note upon "buried," when 
with the graceful curl of the wrist he indicated how 
the clouds which lowered round his head were in 
the deep bosom of the ocean buried? 

Voice, look, and gesture are the actor's symbols, 
through which he makes intelligible the emotions 
of the character he is personating. No amount of 
sensibility will "avail unless it can express itself ade- 
quately by these symbols. It is not enough for 
an actor to feel, he must represent. He must ex- 
press his feelings in symbols universally intelligible 
and affecting. A harsh, inflexible voice, a rigid or. 
heavy face, would prevent even a Shakspeare from 
being impressive and affecting on the stage; whereas 
a man, with little sensibility, but endowed with a 
sympathetic penetrating voice, and a flexible physi- 
ognomy would rouse the pit to transports. 

It is clear that Charles Kean has an organisation 
which excludes him from the artistic expression of 



CHARLES KEAN. 3 I 

complex or subtle emotions. And it was to this I 
alluded in saying that his perseverance had made 
an actor out of very unpromising materials. There 
are no tears in his pathos; there is no terror in his 
wrath. He is violent where he should be agitating, 
lachrymose where he should be affecting. He has 
been acting tragic parts for more than thirty years; 
I should be very much surprised to learn that he 
had once drawn a tear; the pathos of a situation 
may have sometimes overcome a susceptible spec- 
tator, but this effect is not to be set down to the 
actor. The tears lie very near the surface with me, 
but I never felt their sources stirred by any look or 
tone from him. 

In Edmund Kean the ground-swell of subsiding 
emotion was, as I have noted, very finely indicated. 
In Charles Kean there is no trace of it. He passes 
from excessive vehemence to perfect calmness, 
without either voice or look betraying any fluent 
continuity between the two. The fact is that he 
never imaginatively identifies himself with a passion; 
otherwise, even his stubborn physique would express 
something of it, though inadequately. 

Edmund Kean's elocution was often careless 
and ineffective, especially in level passages. But 
his musical ear and musical voice saved him from 



$2 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

the monotony so disagreeable in the elocution oT 
his son, and saved him from that still more unpar- 
donable defect, the dissociation of rhythm from 
meaning. Instead of making the rhythm fluent with 
the meaning, and allowing emphasis and pause to 
fall in the places where naturally the thought be- 
comes emphatic and pauses, he suffers them to be 
very much determined by the formal structure of 
the verse — as if the sense ended with the line — or 
by the duration of his breath. 

Emphasis and pause are indeed the supreme dif- 
ficulties of elocution. They are rarely managed by 
those who read blank verse, even in a room, and 
on the stage the difficulty is greatly enhanced. 
Nevertheless no one can pretend to be an actor of 
the poetic drama who has not mastered this art; 
although at the present day it is, like many other 
requisites, boldly disregarded, and we hear the 
noblest verse spouted (not spoken) with the remorse- 
less indifference of that actor who announced him- 
self thus: 

'Tis I, my lord, the early village cock. 

Edmund Kean had no gaiety, no humour. 
His son, although also destitute of both, is never- 
theless very comic in one or two characters, 



CHARLES KEAN. 3$ 

notably Ford in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." The 
very inflexibility of his face here gives him real 
comic force. Precisely because his features will 
not express any fluctuations of feeling, they are ad- 
mirably suited to express the puzzled, wondering 
stolidity of the jealous, bamboozled husband. It 
is this inflexibility, combined with a certain animal 
force, which makes his melodramatic personations 
so effective. 

Edmund Kean did much for Shakspeare. The 
acting edition of our great dramatist may now al- 
most be said to be based upon his conceptions of 
the leading parts. He invented much. His own 
quick, passionate sympathy saw effects where other 
actors had seen nothing. But I suspect that he had 
only the actor's feeling for the dramatist, and cared 
little about him as a poet. Charles Kean has more 
literary culture, and has shown a more literary am- 
bition. He has added nothing to the elucidation 
of the characters, he has given no fresh light to 
players or public; but he has greatly improved the 
scenic representation, and has lavished time and 
money on the archaeological illustration of the plays. 
He has striven for public applause by appealing to 
the public taste, and he has gained that applause. 
Those who, like myself, care a great deal about act- 
ing and very little about splendid dresses, must 

Actors and Acting. 3 



34 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

nevertheless confess that what Charles Kean pro- 
fessed to do in the way of scenic illustration, he 
did splendidly and successfully. 



RACHEL. 35 



CHAPTER III. 

Rachel. 

Rachel was the panther of the stage; with a 
panther's terrible beauty and undulating grace she 
moved and stood, glared and sprang. There always 
seemed something not human about her. She 
seemed made of different clay from her fellows — 
beautiful but not loveable. Those who never saw 
Edmund Kean may form a very good conception 
of him if they have seen Rachel. She was very 
much as a woman what he was as a man. If he 
was a lion, she was a panther. 

Her range, like Kean's, was very limited, but her 
expression was perfect within that range. Scorn, 
triumph, rage, lust and merciless malignity she 
could represent in symbols of irresistible power; 
but she had little tenderness, no womanly caressing 
softness, no gaiety, no heartiness. She was so 
graceful and so powerful that her air of dignity 
was incomparable; but somehow you always felt in 
her presence an indefinable suggestion of latent 

. 3* 



36 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

wickedness. By the side of Pasta she would have 
appeared like a beautiful devil beside a queenly 
woman: with more intellect, more incisive and im- 
pressive power, but with less soul, less diffusive and 
subduing influence. 

In her early days nothing more exquisite could 
be heard than her elocution — it was musical and 
artistically graduated to the fluctuations of meaning. 
Her thrilling voice, flexible, penetrating, and grave, 
responded with the precision of a keyed instrument. 
Her thin, nervous frame vibrated with emotion. Her 
face, which would have been common, had it not 
been aflame with genius, was capable of intense 
expression. Her gestures were so fluent and grace- 
ful that merely to see her would have been a rare 
delight. The ideal tragedies of Racine, which igno- 
rant Englishmen call "cold," were, by her inter- 
pretation, shown to be instinct with passion and 
dramatic effect. But this was only in her early 
days. Later in her career she grew careless; played 
her parts as if only in a hurry to g^t through them, 
flashing out now and then with tremendous power, 
just to show what she could do; and resembling 
Kean in the sacrifice of the character to a few points. 
She, whose elocution had been incomparable, so 
delicately shaded were its various refinements and 
so sustained its music, came at last to gabble, and 



RACHEL. 37 

to mash up her rhythm till the verses were often 
unintelligible and generally ineffective. After the 
gabble she paused upon some well-known point, 
and flung upon it all the emphasis of her power. 
In what I have to say of her, I shall speak only of 
her acting in its better days, for it is that to which 
memory naturally recurs. 

The finest of her performances was of Phedre. 
Nothing I have ever seen surpassed this picture of 
a soul torn by the conflicts of incestuous passion 
and struggling conscience; the unutterable mourn- 
fulness of her look and tone as she recognised the 
guilt of her desires, yet felt herself so possessed by 
them that escape was impossible, are things never 
to be forgotten. What a picture she was as she 
entered! You felt that she was wasting away under 
the fire within, that she was standing on the verge 
of the grave with pallid face, hot eyes, emaciated 
frame — an awful ghastly apparition. The slow deep 
mournful toning of her apostrophe to the sun, 
especially that close — 

Soleil ! je te viens voir pour la derniere fois — 

produced a thrill which vibrates still in memory. 
The whole of the opening scene, with one excep- 
tion, was inexpressibly affecting and intensely true. 



38 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

As an ideal representation of real emotion, it be- 
longed to the highest art. The remorseful lines — 

Graces au ciel, mes mains ne sont point criminelles : 
Plut aux dieux que mon coeur fut innocent comme elles — 

were charged with pathos. And how finely expressed 
was the hurrying horror with, as it were, a shiver 
between each phrase, transient yet vividly indicated, 
when she confessed her guilt; — 

Tu vas ou'ir le comble des horreurs . . . 
J'aime . . . a ce nom fatal, je tremble, je frissonne . . . 

(and her whole frame here quivered) 

J'aime . . . 
(Enone. — Qui? 
Phedre. — Tu connais ce fils de l'Amazone, 

Ce prince si longtemps par moi-meme opprime . . . 
(Enone. — Hippolyte! Grands dieux ! 
Phedre. — Oest toi qui Vas nomme. 

The one point in this scene to which I took 
exception was the mode of rendering the poet's 
meaning in this magnificent apostrophe, taken from 
Euripides, "Cest toi qui Fas nomme." She uttered 
it in a tone of sorrowing reproach which, as I con- 
ceive, is psychologically at variance with the cha- 
racter and the position. For Phedre has kept her 
love a secret; it is a horrible crime; she cannot 



RACHEL. 39 

utter the name of Hippolyte because of her horror 
at the crime; and not in sadness but in the 
sophistry of passion, she tries indignantly to throw- 
on CEnone the guilt of naming that which should 
be unnameable. 

In the second act, where Phedre declares her 
passion to Hippolyte, Rachel was transcendent. 
She subtly ^contrived to indicate that her passion 
was a diseased passion, fiery and irresistible, yet 
odious to her and to him. She was marvellous in 
the abandonment to this onward-sweeping madness; 
her manner was fierce and rapid, as if the thoughts 
were crowding on her brain in tumult, and she 
dared not pause to consider them; and such was 
the amazing variety and compass of her expression 
that when she quitted the stage she left us quivering 
with an excitement comparable only to that pro- 
duced by Kean in the third act of "Othello." In 
the fourth act came the storm of rage, jealousy, and 
despair; it was lit up by wonderful flashes. Like 
Kean, she had a power of concentrating into a 
single phrase a world of intense feeling; and even 
Kean himself could not have surpassed the terrific 
exclamation — 

Miserable! et je vis ! 

Whoever saw Rachel play Phedre may be par- 



40 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

doned if he doubt whether he will ever see such 
acting again. 

Hermione, in "Andromaque," was also another 
very fine part of hers, especially in the two great 
scenes with Pyrrhus. In the first, her withering 
sarcasm, calm, polished, implacable, was beyond 
description; in the second she displayed her mani- 
fold resources in expressing rage, scorn, grief, 
and defiance. In her eyes charged with lightning, 
in her thin convulsive frame, in the spasms of her 
voice, changing from melodious clearness to a 
hoarseness that made us shudder, the demoniac 
element was felt. With touching and forlorn grace 
she revealed the secret of her heart in the lines: — 

Malgre" le juste horreur que son crime me donne, 
Tant qu'il vivra craignez que je ne lui pardonne; 
Doutez jusqu'a sa mort d'un courroux incertain: 
S'il ne meurt aujourd'huij^/zw Painter demain. 

In describing how she will avenge the insult to 
her beauty by slaying Pyrrhus — 

Je percerai le coeur que je n'ai pu toucher — 

her wail was so piercing and so musical that the 
whole audience rose in a transport to applaud her; 
and difficult as it was to prevent an anticlimax 
after such an effect, she crowned the scene with 



RACHEL. 41 

the exclamation of jealous threat when bidding him 
hasten to his mistress: — 

Va, cours; mais crains encore d'y trouver Hermione. 

The close was in the same high strain. The 
fine passionate speech in which she upbraids Orestes 
for having followed her orders and slain Pyrrhus 
(a speech which may be commended to those who 
fancy Racine is cold) was delivered as nobody but 
Rachel could deliver it. 

Very noticeable it is that Rachel could not 
speak prose with even tolerable success; deprived 
of the music of verse, and missing its ictus, she 
seemed quite incapable of managing the easy 
cadences of colloquial prose. The subtle influence 
of rhythm seemed to penetrate her, and gave a 
movement and animation to her delivery which 
was altogether wanting in her declamation of prose. 
Hence, among other reasons, the failure of her at- 
tempts in modern drama. As Kean was only truly 
great in Shakspeare and Massinger, Rachel was 
only truly herself in Racine and Corneille. 

"In the "Polyeucte" of Corneille she had one 
scene of incomparable grandeur, where, baptized in 
the blood of her martyred husband, she exclaims, — 



42 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

Son sang dont tes bourreaux viennent de me couvrir 
M'a desille les yeux, et me les vient d'ouvrir. 
Je vois, je sais, je crois! 

The climbing exultation and radiant glory of the 
inspired convert, her face lighted with fervour, her 
whole frame trembling with the burden of over- 
powering thoughts, were fitly succeeded by the up- 
lifting of her arms to heaven, while an expression 
of such fervent aspiration glowed in her features 
that she seemed a martyr welcoming the death 
which was the portal to eternal bliss. As an ex- 
ample of "face-acting" should be cited the very 
remarkable scene in "Les Horaces," in which she 
stands silent during the long recital of her lover's 
death. 

Rachel tried once or twice to play Moliere. I 
did not see these attempts, which were pitilessly 
criticized by Jules Janin, but I am convinced that 
they were mistakes. She was wholly unsuited to 
comedy, unless it were comedy like that of Madame 
Girardin's Lady Tartu fe, in which I thought her 
graceful, ladylike, and diabolical — very admirable 
in the way she thoroughly identified herself with 
the character, making its odiousness appear so 
thoroughly easy and unconscious that you almost 
doubted whether after all the woman were so 
odious. The manner in which Rachel walked to 



RACHEL. 43 

the fireplace, placed her gloves on the mantelpiece, 
and her right foot on the fender, as she began the 
great scene with her lover, was of itself a study. 
The sleek hypocrisy of the part was not exaggerated, 
nor was the cruel irony colder or crueller than 
seemed natural to such a woman; it was like the 
occasional gleam of it in "Bajazet," especially 
where Roxane is assured that Bajazet loves her 
still, and she replies, smiling with calm, bitter 
superiority — 

II y va de sa vie, au moms, que je le croie. 

It would form an interesting question why actors 
so transcendent as Kean and Rachel should have 
been singularly limited in the range of characters 
they could play with effect — why, being confessedly 
great in a few difficult parts, they could not be 
even tolerable in many parts less difficult and 
demanding the same kind of talent. But as this is 
a question I am not prepared to answer, I content 
myself with calling attention to it. 



44 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Macready. 

In Edmund Kean and Rachel we recognise 
types of genius; in Macready I see only a man of 
talent, but of talent so marked and individual that 
it approaches very near to genius; and, indeed, in 
justification of those admirers who would claim for 
him the higher title, I may say that Tieck, whose 
opinion on such a matter will be received with 
great respect, told me that Macready seemed to 
him a better actor than either Kean or John 
Kemble; and he only saw Macready in the early 
part of his long and arduous career. 

Of John Kemble I cannot, of course, speak. 
And with respect to Kean, while claiming for him 
the indisputable superiority in the highest reaches 
of his art, I should admit that he was inferior to 
Macready in that general flexibility of talent and 
in that range of intellectual sympathy which are 
necessary to the personation of many and various 
parts. In this sense Macready was the better actor. 






MACREADY. 45 

And he showed it also in another striking difference. 
Kean created scarcely any new parts: with the ex- 
ception of Bertram, Brutus and Sir Edward Mor- 
timer all his attempts with modern plays were more 
or less failures. He gave the stamp of his own 
great power to Shylock, Othello, Sir Giles Over- 
reach, and Richard; but he could not infuse life 
into Virginius or Tell, nor would he, perhaps, have 
succeeded with Werner, Richelieu, Claude Melnotte, 
Ruy Gomez, and the fifty other parts which Mac- 
ready created. It is worthy of note that Kean was 
greatest in the greatest parts, and seemed to require 
the wide range of Shakspearian passion for his 
arena; whereas Macready was greatest in parts like 
Werner, Richelieu, Iago, or Virginius, and always 
fell short when representing the great Shakspearian 
hero. 

Macready had a voice powerful, extensive in 
compass, capable of delicate modulation in quiet 
passages (though with a tendency to scream in 
violent passages), and having tones that thrilled and 
tones that stirred tears. His declamation was 
mannered and unmusical; yet his intelligence al- 
ways made him follow the winding meanings through 
the involutions of the verse, and never allowed you 
to feel, as you feel in the declamation of Charles 
Kean and many other actors, that he was speaking 



46 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

words which he did not thoroughly understand. 
The trick of a broken and spasmodic rhythm might 
destroy the music proper to the verse, but it did 
not perplex you with false emphasis or intonations 
wandering at hazard. His person was good, and 
his face expressive. 

We shall perhaps best understand the nature of 
his talent by thinking of the characters he most 
successfully personated. They were many and 
various, implying great flexibility in his powers; 
but they were not characters of grandeur, physical 
or moral. They were domestic rather than ideal, 
and made but slight appeals to the larger passions 
which give strength to heroes. He was irritable 
where he should have been passionate, querulous 
where he should have been terrible. 

In Macbeth, for example, nothing could be finer 
than the indications he gave of a conscience waver- 
ing under the influence of "fate and metaphysical 
aid," superstitious, and weakly cherishing the sug- 
gestions of superstition; but nothing could have 
been less heroic than his presentation of the great 
criminal. He was fretful and impatient under the 
taunts and provocations of his wife; he was ignoble 
under the terrors of remorse; he stole into the 
sleeping-chamber of Duncan like a man going to 



MACREADY. 47 

purloin a purse, not like a warrior going to snatch 
a crown. 

In Othello, again, his passion was irritability, 
and his agony had no grandeur. His Hamlet I 
thought bad, due allowance being made for the intel- 
ligence it displayed. He was lachrymose and fret- 
ful: too fond of a cambric pocket-handkerchief to 
be really affecting; nor, as it seemed to me, had 
he that sympathy with the character which would 
have given an impressive unity to his performance 
— it was "a thing of shreds and patches," not a 
whole. In King John, Richard II., Iago, and Cas- 
sius, all his great qualities were displayed. In 
Werner, he represented the anguish of a weak mind 
prostrate, with a pathos almost as remarkable as the 
heroic agony of Kean's Othello. The forlorn look 
and wailing accent when his son retorts upon him 
his own plea, "Who taught me there were crimes 
made venial by the occasion?" are not to be for- 
gotten. Nor was the fiery impatience of his Cassius 
less remarkable; it was just the kind of passion he 
could best express. 

In tenderness Macready had few rivals. He 
could exhibit the noble tenderness of a father in 
Virginius, as well as the chivalrous tenderness of a 
lover. None of the young men whom I have seen 



48 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

play Claude Melnotte had the youthfulness of Mac- 
ready in that part; you lost all sense of his sixty 
years in the fervour and resilient buoyancy of his 
manner; and when he paced up and down before 
the footlights, describing to the charming Pauline 
with whom his Melnotte is memorably associated — 
Helen Faucit — the home where love should be, his 
voice, look, and bearing had an indescribable 
effect. It was really a rare sight to witness 
Claude Melnotte and Lear played by the same 
actor in the same week. The fretful irritability of 
the senile king was admirably rendered; he almost 
succeeded in making the character credible; and 
although the terrific curse was probably delivered 
by Kean with incomparably more grandeur, the 
screaming vehemence of Macready was quite in 
keeping with the irritability of the earlier scenes. 

He was a thorough artist, very conscientious, 
very much in earnest, and very careful about all 
the resources of his art. Hence he was always 
picturesque in his costume. Often, indeed, his 
"get up" was such that, to use a common phrase, 
he seemed to have stepped from the canvas of one 
of the old masters. 

Compared with anyone we have seen since 
upon our stage, Macready stands at such an im- 



MACREADY. 49 

measurable height that there must needs be a 
strange perplexity in the minds of his admirers on 
learning that while Kean and Young were still upon 
the stage, Macready was very frequently called a 
"mere melodramatic actor." In any sense which 
I can affix to this phrase it is absurd. He was by 
nature unsuited for some great tragic parts; but by 
his intelligence he was fitted to conceive, and by 
his organisation fitted to express characters, and 
was not like a melodramatic actor — limited to situa- 
tions. Surely Lear, King John, Richard II., Cassius, 
and Iago are tragic parts? In these he was great: 
nor could he be surpassed in certain aspects of 
Macbeth and Coriolanus, although he wanted the 
heroic thew and sinew to represent these characters 
as wholes. 

He did not belong to the stately declamatory 
school of Kemble, but in all parts strove to intro- 
duce as much familiarity of detail as was consistent 
with ideal presentation. His touches of "nature" 
were sometimes a little out of keeping with the 
general elevation of the performance, and he was 
fond of making a "point" by an abrupt transition 
from the declamatory to the conversational; but 
whenever he had an emotion to depict he depicted 
it sympathetically and not artificially; by which I 
mean that he felt himself to be the person, and 

Actors and Acting, 4 



50 ON ACTORS AND THE APT OF ACTING. 

having identified himself with the character, sought 
by means of the symbols of his art to express what 
that character felt; he did not stand outside the 
character and try to express its emotions by the 
symbols which had been employed for other cha- 
racters by other actors. There is a story told of 
him which may be exaggerated, or indeed may not 
be true of him, but which at any rate illustrates so 
well the very important point now under notice, 
that it may be repeated here. In the great scene 
of the third act of the "Merchant of Venice," 
Shylock has to come on in a state of intense rage 
and grief at the flight of his daughter. Now it is 
obviously a great trial for the actor "to strike twelve 
at once." He is one moment calm in the green- 
room, and the next he has to appear on the stage 
with his whole nature in an uproar. Unless he has 
a very mobile temperament, quick as flame, he 
cannot begin this scene at the proper state of white 
heat. Accordingly, we see actors in general come 
bawling and gesticulating, but leaving us unmoved 
because they are not moved themselves. Macready, 
it is said, used to spend some minutes behind the 
scenes, lashing himself into an imaginative rage by 
cursing sotto voce, and shaking violently a ladder 
fixed against the wall. To bystanders the effect 
must have been ludicrous. But to the audience the 



MACREADY. 5 1 

actor presented himself as one really agitated. He 
had worked himself up to the proper pitch of ex- 
citement which would enable him to express the 
rage of Shylock. 

I have heard Madame Vestris tell a similar 
story of Liston, whom she overheard cursing and 
spluttering to himself, as he stood at the side scene 
waiting to go on in a scene of comic rage. 



Let me add to this estimate of Macready's 
powers, the brief account I wrote in 1851 of his 
farewell performance. 

On Wednesday night this expected "solemnity," 
as the French phrase it, attracted an audience such 
as the walls of Drury have not enclosed for many 
a long year. Fortunately, the most rigorous pre- 
cautions had been taken against overcrowding and 
occasion for disputes, so that the compact mass of 
beings was by no means chaotic. Every seat in 
stalls, boxes, and slips had been taken long before. 
Only the pit and galleries had to scramble for 
places, and by two o'clock the most patient and 
provident were waiting outside. Fancy the weari- 
ness of those four hours' attendance! Vinegar-yard 

4* 



52 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

and Little Russell-street were dense with masses of 
expectant, jubilant, sibilant, "chaffing," swearing, 
shouting men; and there was no slight crowd to 
see the crowd. 

As an immense favour, I was offered two places 
in the "basket" (as they call it), at the back of the 
uppermost boxes; and, in the innocence 6f my 
heart, I paid for those places, into which I would 
not have crammed a dog of any gentility. But I 
was rescued from this rehearsal of Purgatory with- 
out its poetry, by the beneficence of a friend, whose 
private box was almost as capacious as his genero- 
sity; so that, instead of an imperfect view of the 
scene, I commanded the whole house. And what 
a sight that was! how glorious, triumphant, affect- 
ing, to see everyone starting up, waving hats and 
handkerchiefs, stamping, shouting, yelling their 
friendship at the great actor, who now made his 
appearance on that stage where he was never more 
to reappear! There was a crescendo of excitement 
enough to have overpowered the nerves of the most 
self-possessed; and when after an energetic fight — 
which showed that the actor's powers bore him 
gallantly up to the last — he fell pierced by Mac- 
duff's sword, this death, typical of the actor's death, 
this last look, this last ^ act of the actor, struck 
every bosom with a sharp and sudden blow, loosen- 



MACREADY. 53 

ing a tempest of tumultuous feeling such as made 
applause an ovation. 

Some little time was suffered to elapse wherein 
we recovered from the excitement, and were ready 
again to burst forth as Macready the Man, dressed 
in his plain black, came forward to bid "Farewell, 
a long farewell to all his greatness." As he stood 
there, calm but sad, waiting till the thunderous 
reverberations of applause should be hushed, there 
was one little thing which brought the tears into 
my eyes, viz., the crape hatband and black studs, 
that seemed to me more mournful and more touch- 
ing than all this vast display of sympathy: it made 
me forget the paint and tinsel, the artifice and glare 
of an actor's life, to remember how thoroughly that 
actor was a man — one of us, sharer of sorrows we 
all have known or all must know! 

Silence was obtained at last; and then in a 
quiet, sad tone, Macready delivered this address: — 

"My last theatrical part is played, and, in ac- 
cordance with long-established usage, I appear once 
more before you. Even if I were without precedent 
for the discharge of this act of duty, it is ,one which 
my own feelings would irresistibly urge upon me; 
for, as I look back on my long professional career, 
I see in it but one continuous record of indulgence 
and support extended to me, cheering me in my 



54 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

onward progress, and upholding me in most trying 
emergencies. I have, therefore, been desirous of 
offering you my parting acknowledgments for trje 
partial kindness with which my humble efforts have 
uniformly been received, and for a life made hap- 
pier by your favour. The distance of flve-and-thirty 
years has not dimmed my recollection of the en- 
couragement which gave fresh impulse to the in- 
experienced essays of my youth, and stimulated me 
to perseverance when struggling hardly for equality 
of position with the genius and talent of those 
artists whose superior excellence I ungrudgingly 
admitted, admired, and honoured. That encourage- 
ment helped to place me, in respect to privileges 
and emolument, on a footing with my distinguished 
competitors. With the growth of time your favour 
seemed to grow; and undisturbed in my hold on 
your opinion, from year to year I found friends 
more closely and thickly clustering round me. All 
I can advance to testify how justly I have appre- 
ciated the patronage thus liberally awarded me is 
the devotion throughout those years of my best 
energies to your service. My ambition to establish 
a theatre, in regard to decorum and taste, worthy 
of our country, and to leave in it the plays of our 
divine Shakspeare fitly illustrated, was frustrated by 
those whose duty it was, in virtue of the trust com- 



MACREADY. 55 

mitted to them, themselves to have undertaken the 
task. But some good seed has yet been sown; and 
in the zeal and creditable productions of certain of 
our present managers we have assurance that the 
corrupt editions and unseemly presentations of past 
days will never be restored, but that the purity of 
our great poet's text will henceforward be held on 
our English stage in the reverence it ever should 
command. I have little more to say. By some the 
relation of an actor to his audience is considered 
slight and transient. I do not feel it so. The 
repeated manifestation, under circumstances per- 
sonally affecting me, of your favourable sentiments 
towards me, will live with life among my most 
grateful memories; and, because I would not will- 
ingly abate one jot in your esteem, I retire with the 
belief of yet unfailing powers, rather than linger on 
the scene, to set in contrast the feeble style of age 
with the more vigorous exertions of my better years. 
Words — at least such as I can command — are in- 
effectual to convey my thanks. In offering them, 
you will believe I feel far more than I give utterance 
to. With sentiments of the deepest gratitude I take 
my leave, bidding you, ladies and gentlemen, in my 
professional capacity, with regret and most respect- 
fully, farewell." 

This was received with renewed applause. Per- 



56 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

haps a less deliberate speech would have better 
suited the occasion; a few words full of the elo- 
quence of the moment would have made a deeper 
and more memorable impression; but under such 
trying circumstances a man may naturally be afraid 
to trust himself to the inspiration of the moment. 
Altogether I must praise Macready for the dignity 
with which he retired, and am glad that he did not 
act. There was no ostentation of cambric sorrow; 
there was no well got-up broken voice to simulate 
emotion. The manner was calm, grave, sad, and 
dignified. 

Macready retires into the respect of private life. 
A reflection naturally arises on the perishableness 
of an actor's fame. He leaves no monument behind 
him but his name. This is often thought a hard- 
ship. I believe that great confusion exists in the 
public mind on this subject. 

It is thought a hardship that great actors in 
quitting the stage can leave no monument more 
solid than a name. The painter leaves behind him 
pictures to attest his power; the author leaves be- 
hind him books; the actor leaves only a tradition. 
The curtain falls — the artist is annihilated. Suc- 
ceeding generations may be told of his genius; none 
can test it. 



MACREADY. 57 

All this I take to be a most misplaced sorrow. 
With the best wishes in the world I cannot bring 
myself to place the actor on a level with the painter 
or the author. I cannot concede to the actor such 
a parity of intellectual greatness; while, at the same 
time, I am forced to remember that, with inferior 
abilities, he secures far greater reward, both of 
pudding and praise. It is not difficult to assign the 
causes of an actor's superior reward, both in noisy 
reputation and in solid guineas. He amuses. He 
amuses more than the most amusing author. And 
our luxuries always cost us more than our neces- 
sities. Taglioni or Carlotta were better paid than 
Edmund Kean or Macready. Jenny Lind better 
than both put together. 

But while the dramatic artist appeals to a larger 
audience, and moves them more forcibly than either 
painter or author, owing to the very nature of his 
art, a very slight acquaintance with acting and 
actors will suffice to show there can be no parity 
in the rank of a great painter and a great actor. 
Place Kean beside Caravaggio (and, though I select 
the greatest actor I have known, I take a third-rate 
painter, not wishing to overpower the argument 
with such names as ^Raphael, Michel Angelo, Titian), 
and ask what comparison can be made of their 
intellectual qualifications! Or take Macready 



58 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

and weigh him in the scale with Bulwer or 
Dickens. 

The truth is, we exaggerate the talent of an 
actor because we judge only from the effect he pro- 
duces, without enquiring too curiously into the 
means. But, while the painter has nothing but his 
canvas and the author has nothing but white paper 
and printer's ink with which to produce his effects, 
the actor has all other arts as handmaids; the poet 
labours for him, creates his part, gives him his 
eloquence, his music, his imagery, his tenderness, 
his pathos, his sublimity; the scene-painter aids 
him; the costumes, the lights, the music, all the 
fascination of the stage — all subserve the actor's 
effect: these raise him upon a pedestal; remove 
them, and what is he? He who can make a stage 
mob bend and sway with his eloquence, what could 
he do with a real mob, no poet by to prompt him? 
He who can charm us with the stateliest imagery 
of a noble mind, when robed in the sables of 
Hamlet, or in the toga of Coriolanus, what can he 
do in coat and trousers on the world's stage? Rub 
off the paint, and the eyes are no longer brilliant! 
Reduce the actor to his intrinsic value, and then 
weigh him with the rivals whom he surpasses in 
reputation and in fortune. 

If my estimate of the intrinsic value of acting 



MACREADY. 59 

is lower than seems generally current, it is from no 
desire to disparage an art I have always loved; but 
from a desire to state what seems to me the simple 
truth on the matter, and to show that the demand 
for posthumous fame is misplaced. Already the 
actor gets more fame than he deserves, and we are 
called upon to weep that he gets no more! During 
his reign the applause which follows him exceeds 
in intensity that of all other claimants for public 
approbation; so long as he lives he is an object of 
strong sympathy and interest; and when he dies he 
leaves behind him such influence upon his art as 
his genius may have effected (true fame!) and a 
monument to kindle the emulation of successors. 
Is 'not that enough? Must he weep because other 
times will not see his acting? Must we weep be- 
cause all that energy, labour, genius, if you will, is 
no more than a tradition? Folly!* In this crowded 
world how few there are who can leave even a 
name, how rare those who leave more. The author 
can be read by future ages? Oh! yes, he can be 

* The illustrious mathematician, Jacobi, in his old age, was 
once consoled by a flattering disciple with the remark that all 
future mathematicians would delight in his work. He drew 
down the corners of his mouth and said, despairingly, "Yes; 
but to think that all my predecessors knew nothing of my work ! " 
Here was vanity hungrier than that of the actor, 



60 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

read: the books are preserved; but is he read? 
Who disturbs them from their repose upon the 
dusty shelves of silent libraries? What are the 
great men of former ages, with rare, very rare, ex- 
ceptions, but names to the world which shelves their 
well-bound volumes? 

Unless some one will tell me in sober gravity 
(what is sometimes absurdly said in fulsome dinner 
speeches and foolish dedications) that the actor has 
a "kindred genius" with the poet, whose creations 
he represents, and that in sheer intellectual calibre 
Kean and Macready were nearly on a par with 
Shakspeare, I do not see what cause of complaint 
can exist in the actor's not sharing the posthumous 
fame of a Shakspeare. His fame while he lives 
surpasses that of almost all other men. Byron was 
not so widely worshipped as Kean. Lawrence and 
Northcote, Wilkie and Mulready, what space did 
they fill in the public eye compared with Young, 
Charles Kemble, or Macready? Surely this renown 
is ample? 

If Macready share the regret of his friends, and 
if he yearn for posthumous fame, there is yet one 
issue for him to give the world assurance of his 
powers. Shakspeare is a "good raft whereon to float 
securely down the stream of time; fasten yourself 
to that and your immortality is safe. Now Shak- 



MACREADY. 6 1 

speare must have occupied more of Macready's time 
and thought than any other subject. Let fruits be 
given. Let us have from him an edition of Shak- 
speare, bringing all his practical experience as an 
actor to illustrate this the first of dramatists. We 
want no more black letter. We want no more hyper- 
boles of admiration. We want the dramatic ex- 
cellences and defects illustrated and set forth. Will 
Macready undertake such a task? It would be a 
delightful object to occupy his leisure; and it would 
settle the question as to his own intellectual claims. 
The foregoing was written in 1851. This year, 
1875, the "Reminiscences and Diaries of Macready" 
have been given to the world by Sir Frederick 
Pollock, and they strikingly confirm the justice of 
my estimate, which almost reads like an echo of 
what Macready himself expressed. In those volumes 
we see the incessant study which this eminently 
conscientious man to the last bestowed on every 
detail connected with his art; we see also how he 
endeavoured by study to make up for natural de- 
ficiencies, and how conscious he was of these de- 
ficiencies. We see him over-sensitive to the imaginary 
disrespect in which his profession is held, and 
throughout his career hating the stage, while de- 
voting himself to the art. But although his sensi- 
tiveness suffered from many of 'the external con- 



62 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

ditions of the player's life, his own acceptance by the 
world was a constant rebuke to his exaggerated 
claims. He was undeniably a cultivated, honourable, 
and able man, and would have made an excellent 
clergyman or member of Parliament; but there is 
absolutely no evidence that he could have made 
such a figure either in the Church or Senate as 
would compare with that which he made upon the 
stage. 



FARREN. 63 



CHAPTER V. 

Farren. 

That no one has been found to take the place 
of Farren has frequently been matter of regretful 
reproach on the part of critics and playgoers who 
forget that during the memory of living men no 
English actor has had the slightest pretension to 
rank with this rare and accomplished comedian. If 
we of this generation have seen no other Sir Peter 
Teazle and Lord Ogleby, our fathers were no luckier. 
Farren, who began playing the old men at nineteen, 
and played them without a rival for nearly half a 
century, used to say of himself that he was a "cock 
salmon," the only fish of his kind in the market. 
And it would be a curious subject of enquiry why 
this was the case. In France they have had a few 
brilliant and many excellent representatives of what 
used to be called the "Farren parts." In Germany 
these parts have been filled as well as others; but 
in England Farren has been without a rival, with- 
out even a modest rival. Blanchard, Dowton, Fawcett, 



64 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

Bartley, are names which linger in the memories of 
playgoers — all good actors in their way, but not 
one of them conceivable in Sir Peter Teazle or 
Bertrand (in "Bertrand et Raton"), Grandfather 
Whitehead, or the Country Squire (I purposely name 
parts embracing a wide range); and as to the "old 
men" who have come since — non ragioniam di lor I 

There was a certain elegance and distinction 
about Farren which made people constantly com- 
pare him with the best French actors. He had a 
marvellous eye for costume, and a quick apprecia- 
tion of all the little details of manner. His face 
was handsome, with a wonderful hanging under-lip, 
capable of a great variety of expression; he had a 
penetrating voice, a clear articulation, a singularly 
expressive laugh; and these qualities, coupled with 
a very close observation of characteristics, made 
him a finished actor — whom nobody cared about. 

When I say that nobody cared about him, I 
mean that, in spite of the unquestioned admiration 
of his talent, there was none of that personal regard 
usually felt for public favourites. Everybody ap- 
plauded him; everybody admitted his excellences; 
everybody was glad to find his name on the bill, 
but no one went especially to see him. In theatrical 
phrase "he never drew a house." He would always 



FARREN*. 65 

"strengthen a cast," and has many a time de- 
termined the success of a piece. But that kind of 
fanaticism which popular actors excite in their ad- 
mirers was never excited by him; and I believe it 
was on this ground that he so rarely visited the 
provinces, where other actors reap the harvests 
sown in metropolitan reputations. 

Why was this? Farren amused the public, and 
the public applauded him. Why was he less of a 
personal favourite than many an inferior actor? It 
was owing, I conceive, to the parts he played, arid 
to his manner of playing them. The parts were 
not those which appeal to general sympathy — they 
represented old age as either ridiculous or fretful, 
not venerable or pathetic. Crusty old bachelors, 
jealous old husbands, stormy fathers, worrying 
uncles, or ancient fops with ghastly pretensions to 
amiability — such were the types which he usually 
presented to the public; and when the types were 
more amiable or more humorous, there was a some- 
thing in his manner which arrested a perfect sym- 
pathy. He had no geniality; he had no gaiety. 
There was none of the fervid animation which acts 
like electricity upon the spectator. He was without 
unction. His laugh, wonderful as a senile chuckle, 
or as a gurgle of sensuality, had no ring of mirth 
in it. The comedy was high comedy which never 

Actors and Acting, 5 



66 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

lowered itself to farce; but it also wanted some of 
the animal spirits and geniality which overflow in 
farce. 

A striking illustration of his talent and his want 
of loveable humour was presented by his per- 
formance of the simple cure in "Secret Service," a 
translation of a French piece in which BoufTe played 
the same part. Those who saw the two performances 
hesitated as to which was the more admirable, but 
no one could have doubted as to which was the 
more loveable man, the English or the French priest. 
The subject of the piece is the unconscious acting 
as a spy by a simple-minded old cure, who, having 
been at school with Fouche, applies to him for 
some employment that he may cease to be a burden 
on his niece. By a mistake in interpreting Fouche's 
order, the cure is set to do the work of a spy, in 
which his innocence of manner (supposed to be art) 
admirably assists him. The revulsion of feeling 
when he discovers the truth is a good dramatic op- 
portunity, and was pathetically rendered both by 
Farren and Bouffe, better by the latter because his 
whole organism was more sensitive. Up to this 
point, however, the character is one of adorable 
simplicity, and the way this was personated by the 
two great actors — each so individual, the one as 
English as the other was French — puzzled criticism 



FARREN. 67 

to award the palm. But, nevertheless, we all left 
the theatre admiring Farren, and feeling an in- 
definable regard for Bouffe. I was not able to in- 
stitute a similar comparison with Grandfather White- 
head, which was one of Farren's most successful 
performances in later years; but I suspect that a 
similar difference would have been noticeable. 

Like all comic actors, Farren had a secret belief 
in his tragic powers. Nor is this general craving 
of comedians for acceptance in tragedy a matter 
for wonder or ridicule. A similar craving is felt by 
comic writers. It is an insurgence of self-respect 
against the implied disrespect of laughter. No man 
likes to be classed with buffoons, although he may 
be willing enough now and then to vent his humour 
in buffoonery, or to excite your admiration by his 
powers of mimicking what is ridiculous. There has 
always been to me something pathetic in the thought 
of Liston, with his grave and serious turn of mind, 
his quick sensibilities, and his intense yearning for 
applause, fatally classed by Nature among those to 
whom tragic expression was impossible — feeling 
within him tragic capacity, and knowing that his 
face was a grotesque mask and his voice a sug- 
gestion of drollery. I think it not unlikely that, 
with another face and voice, Liston might have 
succeeded in tragedy; but this is only saying that, 

5* 



6S ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

had he been another man, he would have been 
another actor. His mistake lay in not perceiving 
that, with such physical qualifications, tragedy was 
impossible to him. With Farren the case was, I 
imagine, still more hopeless. The deficiency lay 
deeper. He could touch a chord of pathos gently, 
but he was quite incapable of expressing any power- 
ful emotion. I saw him play the Hunchback — a 
part, indeed, originally intended for him by Knowles 
— and never saw a fine actor so utterly feeble. 
Once or twice, I believe, he tried the experiment of 
Shylock upon provincial audiences; but he was not 
sufficiently encouraged to try it in London. 

Farren was emphatically the representative of 
gentlemen. His air of high-breeding was different 
in Lord Ogleby, Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony Ab- 
solute, the Country Squire, and many other parts, 
but it had always the seal of distinction. He was 
also an actor whose fineness of observation gave 
an air of intellectual superiority even to his fools. 
I do not mean that he represented the fools as in- 
tellectual; but that his manner of representing them 
was such as to impress spectators with a high sense 
of his intellectual finesse. 

Yet I understand that in private he produced 
the contrary impression. He had certainly a very 



FARREN. 69 

keen eye for a wide range of characteristics, and 
presented a greater variety of memorable types 
than any actor of his time; and if it is true, as 
many assert, that off the stage he was rather stupid 
than otherwise, it only shows, what indeed requires 
no fresh proof, that acting is an art very much 
more dependent on special aptitudes than on 
general intellectual vigour; a man may be a magni- 
ficent singer with the smallest philosophical endow- 
ments, and a marvellous actor with an amount of 
information which would deeply afflict Mrs. Marcet, 
or of critical insight which would excite the pity of 
a quarterly reviewer. We are too apt to generalise 
from a general term: we call a man clever because 
he surpasses his rivals; and as the word clever is 
used to designate any kind of superiority, we rashly 
conclude that a clever actor ought to be intellec- 
tually distinguished, and because he is a good mime 
he must be an acute thinker. 

Farren, undoubtedly, had in a high degree the 
intelligence necessary for his art, and the physical 
qualifications which the art demanded; whatever he 
may have been in private, he was eminently an 
intellectual actor, meaning by that phrase an actor 
who produced his effects not by the grotesqueness 
or drollery of his physique, but by the close obser- 
vation and happy reproduction of characteristics — 



70 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

i. e. not by appealing physically to our mirthful 
sensibilities, but indirectly through our intellectual 
recognition of the incongruous. 



CHARLES MATHEWS. 7 I 



CHAPTER VI. 

Charles Mathews. 

It has long been the opinion of playgoers and 
critics that Charles Mathews might fairly be classed 
with the best French actors in his own line; and 
the success which during two seasons he has 
achieved on the French stage is a striking con- 
firmation of that opinion. Although he has been a 
great favourite with our public from the first night 
through the whole of his career, it is only of late 
years that he has displayed remarkable powers as 
a comedian. He was admired for his grace and 
elegance, his ease and pleasant vivacity, and for a 
certain versatile power of mimicry; but critics denied 
that he was a comedian, and I do not think the 
critics were unjust, so long as he confined himself 
to what are called "character pieces," and did not 
show his powers in "character parts." The dif- 
ference between his performances in "He would be 
an Actor" or "Patter versus Clatter," and in "The 
Game of Speculation" or "The Day of Reckoning," 



J 2 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

is all the difference between a clever mimic and a 
fine comedian — between a lively caricaturist and a 
skilful portrait-painter. 

I have followed the career of this actor with 
delight. His first appearance, in "Old and Young 
Stagers/' forms a pleasant landing-place in my 
memory as I wander backwards. The incomparable 
Liston delayed his departure from the stage in order 
to protect the debut of the son of his old colleague 
and friend, and there have been few debuts more 
curiously expected and more cordially welcomed. 
It was known to "the boxes" that Charles Mathews 
had been made a pet of in many aristocratic 
families, and had acted in private circles at Rome, 
Florence, and Naples with singular success. It was 
known to "the pit" (in those days there were no 
stalls) that the son of the public favourite, though 
trained as an architect, had resolved to quit Pugin 
for Thespis; and as the Olympic, under the manage- 
ment of Madame Vestris, was the theatre of the 
elegances and the home of pleasant mirthfulness, 
the appearance of the young artist at this theatre 
was in itself an event. But expectations such as 
these are as perilous to weak pretensions as they 
are encouraging to real talent; and if Charles 
Mathews triumphed it Vas in virtue of very un- 
deniable qualities. Anything so airy and fascinat- 



CHARLES MATHEWS. 73 

ing as this young man had not been seen upon 
our stage. In general, theatres feel that the jeune 
premier is their weak point. He is bad enough in 
fiction; but in fiction we do not see him, whereas 
on the stage the weakness of the character is usually 
aggravated by a "bend in the back" and an im- 
placable fatuity. 

It is a rare assemblage of qualities that enables 
an actor to be sufficiently good-looking without 
being insufferably conceited, to be quiet without 
being absurdly insignificant, to be lively without 
being vulgar, to look like a gentleman, to speak 
and move like a gentleman, and yet to be as 
interesting as if this quietness were only the re- 
straint of power, not the absence of individuality. 
And the more pronounced the individuality, that is, 
the more impassioned or more vivacious the cha- 
racter represented, the greater is the danger of be- 
coming offensive by exaggeration and coarseness. 

Charles Mathews was eminently vivacious: a 
nimble spirit of mirth sparkled in his eye, and gave 
airiness to every gesture. He was in incessant 
movement without ever becoming obtrusive or 
fidgety. A certain grace tempered his vivacity; an 
innate sense of elegance rescued him from the ex- 
aggerations of animal spirits. "He wanted weight," 



74 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

as an old playgoer once reproachfully said of him; 
but he had the qualities of his defects, and the 
want of weight became delightful airiness. Whether 
he danced the Tarentella with charming Miss Fitz- 
patrick, or snatched up a guitar and sang, he neither 
danced like a dancer, nor sang like a singer, but 
threw the charm of a lively nature into both. I 
think I see him now in "One Hour" seated op- 
posite Madame Vestris, and made to subdue his 
restless impatience while he held her skeins of silk 
— a very drawing-room version of Hercules at the 
feet of Omphale — and I picture to myself how the 
majority of jeunes premiers would comport them- 
selves in that position! 

In our juvenile apprehensions he was the beau- 
ideal of elegance. We studied his costumes with 
ardent devotion. We envied him his tailor, and 
"made him our pattern to live and to die." We 
could see no faults in him; and all the criticisms 
which our elders passed on him grated harshly in 
our ears as the croaking of "fogies." As a proof of 
my enthusiasm I may mention that I wrote a one- 
act comedy for him, at an age when anything less 
than five acts and blank verse seemed beneath the 
dignity of an aspiring author. (I will do him the 
justice to say that he did not accept it.) 

But if no faults were discernible then, I now 



CHARLES MATHEWS. 75 

see, in retrospect, that it was the charm of the man 
rather than any peculiar talent in the actor which 
carried him so successfully through those little 
Olympic pieces; and that when he began to try his 
powers in more exacting parts — such as Charles 
Surface, for instance — there was still the old elegance, 
but not the old success. Practice and study, how- 
ever, made him an accomplished comedian within 
a certain range, the limits of which are determined 
by his singular want of passionate expression. No 
good actor I have ever seen was so utterly power- 
less in the manifestation of all the powerful emotions : 
rage, scorn, pathos, dignity, vindictiveness, tender- 
ness, and wild mirth are all beyond his means. He 
cannot even laugh with animal heartiness. He 
sparkles, he never explodes. Yet his keen observa- 
tion, his powers of imitation, and a certain artistic 
power of preserving the unity of a character in all 
its details, are singularly shown in such parts as 
Lavater, Sir Charles Coldstream, Mr. Affable Hawk, 
and the villain in "The Day of Reckoning." 

This last-mentioned part was, unfortunately for 
him, excluded from his habitual repertory by the 
disagreeable nature of the piece. A French melo- 
drame, never worth much even on the Boulevards, 
and still less adapted to the Lyceum audiences, 
afforded him an opportunity which I think is unique 



76 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

in his varied career, the opportunity of portraying 
a melodramatic villain; and he showed himself a 
great comedian in the way he portrayed it. Imagine 
a Count D'Orsay destitute alike of principle and of 
feeling, the incarnation of heartless elegance, cool 
yet agreeable, admirable in all the externals which 
make men admired in society, and hateful in all 
the qualities tested by the serious trials of life: 
such was the Count presented by Charles Mathews. 
Instead of "looking the villain," he looked like the 
man to whom all drawing-rooms would be flung 
open. Instead of warning away his victims by a 
countenance and manner more significant of villany 
than the description of the "Hue and Cry," he 
allured them with the graceful ease of a conscience 
quite at rest, and the manner of an assured ac- 
ceptance. Whether the pit really understood this 
presentation, and felt it as a rare specimen of art, 
I cannot say; but I am sure that no critic capable 
of ridding himself of conventional prepossession 
would see such a bit of action and forget it. 

It is needless to speak of his performance in 
"The Game of Speculation," the artistic merit of 
which was so great that it almost became an 
offence against morality, by investing a swindler 
with irresistible charms, and making the very 
audacity of deceit a source of pleasurable sym- 



CHARLES MATHEWS. 77 

pathy. Enough to say that all who had the oppor- 
tunity of comparing this performance with that of 
the original actor of the part in France, declared 
that the superiority of Charles Mathews was incal- 
culable. (I have since seen Got, the great comedian 
of the Theatre Francais, in this part, yet I prefer 
Charles Mathews.) 

The multitude of characters, some of them ex- 
cellent types, which he has portrayed, is so great 
that I cannot name a third of them. They had all 
one inestimable quality, that of being pleasant; 
and the consequence is that he is an universal 
favourite. Indeed, the personal regard which the 
public feels for him is something extraordinary 
when we consider that it is not within the scope 
of his powers to move us by kindling any of our 
deeper sympathies. And it is interesting to com- 
pare this feeling of regard with its absence in the 
case of Farren. Farren was assuredly a finer actor, 
and held a more undisputed position on the stage, 
for he had simply no rival at all. His career was 
long, and unvaryingly successful. Yet the public 
which applauded him as an actor did not feel much 
personal regard for him as a man; whereas for 
Charles Mathews the feeling was not inaptly ex- 
pressed by an elderly gentleman in the boxes of 
the Lyceum on the fall of the curtain one night 



J 8 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

after "The Game of Speculation": "And to think 
of such a man being in difficulties! There ought 
to be a public subscription got up to pay his debts." 



The reappearance of Charles Mathews in one 
of his favourite parts, in "Used Up," after having 
played that part with great success in Paris, 
naturally attracts large audiences to the Hay market; 
and, as I had not seen him play it for many years 
it drew me there, that I might enjoy what now 
becomes more and more of a rarity, a really fine 
bit of acting. Nor was my enjoyment balked, as 
far as he was concerned, although it would have 
been greater had there been a little more attention 
paid to the mounting of the piece. The Haymarket 
Theatre is, or rather pretends to be, our leading 
theatre for comedy. And on such a stage, or 
indeed on any stage, the insolent disregard of all 
artistic conditions which could permit such a per- 
formance as that of Sir Adonis Leech by Mr. 
Rogers (an actor cot without merit in certain 
characters), and which could allow a valet to be 
dressed like Mr. Clark, implies a state of facile 
acquiescence on the part of t"?e public which ex- 



CHARLES MATHEWS. 79 

plains the utter decay of the drama. As long as 
critics are silent and the groundlings laugh, such 
things will continue. If Mr. Rogers can be accepted 
as the representative of an English gentleman of 
our day, if aspect and bearing such as his can pass 
without protest, what can be the peculiar delight 
received from the exquisite elegance and verisimili- 
tude of Charles Mathews? My private conviction 
is that the majority of the audience enjoyed the 
fun of the part with very little enjoyment of the 
actifig; and what deepens this conviction is that 
there was more applause in the second act, where 
the fun "grows fast and furious," and where the 
acting is indifferent, than in the first act, where the 
acting is perfect and the fun mild. As the languor- 
ous man of fashion Charles Mathews is faultless. 
There is an exquisite moderation in his performance 
which shows a nice perception of nature. The 
coolness is never overdone. The languor is never 
obtruded. When the blacksmith is threatening 
him, there is nothing to suggest that he is assum- 
ing an attitude of indifference. From first to last 
we have a character, the integrity of which is never 
sacrificed to isolated effects. 

But in the second act, where the man of fashion 
appears as a ploughboy, all sense of artistic truth 
There are two methods of carrying out 



80 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

the dramatic conception of this act — one which 
should present a ploughboy, with enough verisimi- 
litude to deceive the farmer and delight the 
audience; the other which should present a gentle- 
man acting the ploughboy, and every now and then 
overacting or forgetting the part, and always when 
alone, or with Mary, relapsing into his native 
manner. Now Charles Mathews misses both these. 
He is not at all like a ploughboy, nor like Sir 
Charles Coldstream acting the ploughboy. So little 
regard has he to truth, that he does not even 
remove the rings from his white fingers, although a 
jewelled hand is not usually seen directing a plough. 
Nor when the farmer is absent does the removal of 
such a constraint make any change in his voice and 
bearing. The situations of this act are funny, and 
the amused spectators perhaps enjoy the broad 
contrast between the elegance of Sir Charles and 
the homeliness of the ploughboy; but an accom- 
plished comedian like Charles Mathews ought to 
have seized such an opportunity of revealing the 
elegance and refined coolness of the man under the 
necessary coarseness of his assumed character. The 
alternations are just the sort of effects which one 
could fancy must be tempting to an artist conscious 
of his powers. It is, however, plain to anyone who 
is sufficiently critical to discriminate between the 



CHARLES MATHEWS. 8 1 

acting and the situation, that Charles Mathews has 
no distinct conception in his mind of any character 
at all placed in this difficult situation, but that he 
abandons himself to the situation, and allows the 
fun of it to do his work. In other words, it is 
farce, not comedy: whereas the first act is comedy, 
and high comedy. 

As I did not see what the French critics wrote 
about his performance, I cannot say what effect this 
act had on them. - And, indeed, as, according to 
my experience, the French critics usually confine 
their remarks to the general impression of a 
performance, and seldom analyse it, they may have 
contented themselves with eulogies varied by 
allusions to Arnal, who created the part. Yet I am 
much mistaken if they also did not perceive the 
glaring discrepancy between the first and second 
acts; and whatever Arnal may have done, I feel 
persuaded that Bouffe or Got (supposing them to 
have played the parts) could have made the second 
act quite as remarkable for its representation of 
character as the first act. 

After "Used Up" came the burlesque of "The 
Golden Fleece," with Compton delightfully humorous 
as the King, and Charles Mathews inimitably easy 
as the Chorus. Compton's burlesque seems to me 
in the very finest spirit of artistic drollery, and as 

Actors and Acting. 6 



82 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

unlike what is usually attempted, as true comedy is 
unlike efforts to be funny. Bad actors seem to 
imagine that they have only to be extravagant to be 
burlesque; as bad comedians think they have only 
to make grimaces to be comic. But Robson and 
Compton, guided by a true artistic sense, show that 
burlesque acting is the grotesque personation of a 
character, not the outrageous defiance of all charac- 
ter; the personation has truth, although the charac- 
ter itself may be preposterously drawn. 

A similar remark may be made of the acting of 
Charles Mathews as the Chorus. He is assuredly 
not what would be called a burlesque actor in the 
ordinary acceptation of the term, nor would anyone 
familiar with his style suppose him capable of the 
heartiness and force usually demanded by burlesque; 
and yet, because he is a fine actor, he is fine also 
in burlesque, giving a truthful and easy personation 
to an absurd conception. Another actor in such a 
part as Chorus, would have "gagged" or made 
grimaces, would have been extravagant and sought 
to startle the public into laughter at broad incon- 
gruities. Charles Mathews is as quiet, easy, elegant, 
as free from points and as delightfully humorous 
as if the part he played and the words he uttered 
belonged to high comedy; he allows the incongruity 
of the character and the language to work their 



CHARLES MATHEWS. 83 

own laughable way, and he presents them with the 
gravity of one who believed them. Notice also the 
singular unobtrusiveness of his manner, even when 
the situation is most broadly sketched. For ex- 
ample, when the King interrupts his song by an 
appeal to Chorus, Charles Mathews steps forward, 
and, bending over the footlights with tr#t quiet 
gravity which has hitherto marked his familiar ex- 
planations of what is going on, begins to sing/ol 
de riddle lol. There is not one actor in a score 
who would not have spoiled the humour of this by 
a wink or grimace at the audience, as much as to 
say, "Now I'm going to make you laugh." The 
imperturbable gravity and familiar ease of Mathews 
give a drollery to this "fol de riddle lol" which is 
indescribable. Probably few who saw Charles 
Mathews play the Chorus consider there was any 
art required so to play it; they can understand that 
to sing patter songs as he sings them may not be 
easy, but to be quiet and graceful and humorous, 
to make every line tell, and yet never show the 
stress of effort, will not seem wonderful. If they 
could see another actor in the part it would open 
their eyes. 



84 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Frederic Lemaicre. 

Among the few actors of exceptional genius 
who by reason of their very individuality defy 
classification, and provoke the most contradictory 
judgments, must be placed the singularly gifted 
Frederic Lemaitre. Those who have only seen him 
in the pitiable decay of his later years cannot easily 
understand the enthusiasm he excited in his prime; 
but they will understand it, perhaps, if they reflect 
that because he was an actor of genius, and not 
an actor of talent, he necessarily lost his hold of 
audiences when age and reckless habits had des- 
troyed the personal qualifications which had been 
the sources of his triumph. 

There was always something offensive to good 
taste in Frederic's acting — a note of vulgarity, partly 
owing to his daring animal spirits, but mainly owing, 
I suspect, to an innate vulgarity of nature. In his 
great moments he was great; but he was seldom 
admirable throughout an entire scene, and never 



FREDERIC LEMA1TRE. 85 

throughout an entire play. In his famous character 
of Robert Macaire the defects were scarcely felt, 
because the colossal buffoonery of that conception 
carried you at once into the region of hyperbole 
and Aristophanic fun which soared beyond the 
range of criticism. It disgusted or subdued you 
at once. In every sense of the word it was a crea- 
tion. A common melodrama without novelty or 
point became in his hands a grandiose symbolical 
caricature; and Robert Macaire became a type, just 
as Lord Dundreary has become one in our own 
day. The costume he invented for that part was 
in itself a magnificent effrontery. It struck the key- 
note; and as the piece proceeded all was felt to be 
in harmony with that picture of ideal blackguardism. 
For the peculiarity of Robert Macaire is the union 
of a certain ideal grace and bonhomie with the most 
degraded ruffianism and hardness, as of a noble- 
man preserving some of the instincts and habits of 
his class amid the instincts and habits of the galleys 
and the pothouse. If he danced, it was not until 
he had first pulled on a pair of hyperbolically 
tattered kid gloves; and while waltzing with incom- 
parable elegance he could not resist picking the 
pocket of his fair partner. He sang, took snuff, 
philosophised, and jested with an air of native 
superiority, and yet made you feel that he was a 



86 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

hateful scoundrel all the while. You laughed at 
his impudence, you admired his ease and readiness, 
and yet you would have killed him like a rat. He 
was jovial, graceful, false, and cruel. 

In Don Cesar de Bazan there was another and 
a very different portrait of the picturesque black- 
guard. Here also was the union of grace and 
tatters, of elegance and low habits. The Spanish 
nobleman had stained his ermine, and dragged his 
honour through the wineshop and the brothel; but 
he had never wholly lost himself, and had not per- 
verted his original nature. It was difficult to con- 
ceive anything more disreputable and debrailU than 
this Don Cesar when he first appeared, tipsy and 
moralising on the fact that he had "gambled with 
blackguards, who had cheated him like gentlemen." 
There was immense exaggeration, but it was the 
exaggeration of great scene-painting. Very shortly 
you perceived the real nature of the man under- 
neath — the nature stained, not spoiled, by reckless 
dissipation; and it was therefore no surprise when, 
as the play proceeded, the nobler elements of this 
nature asserted themselves, and Don Cesar claimed 
respect. 

But although Frederic's performance of this part 
was in many respects incomparable, it had many 
serious defects. His love of "gagging" and his 



FREDERIC LEMAlTRE. 87 

subordination of the scene to some particular effect 
were unpleasantly shown in that capital interview 
with the King, when his Majesty is discovered by 
Don Cesar in his wife's apartment. He quite spoiled 
by vulgarity the effect of his retort when the King, 
not knowing him, gives himself out as Don Cesar. 
"Vous etes Don Cesar de Bazan? Eh bien! alors 
je suis le Roi d'Espagne." He made it very 
comical, but it was farcical and inartistic; and the 
stupid appeal to the vulgarest laughter of the 
audience in the grotesquely extravagant feather 
which danced in his hat was suited to a pantomime 
or burlesque, but very unsuited to the serious situa- 
tion of the drama. 

Very different was his acting in the prison 
scene, and especially noticeable was the rapid 
change from jovial conviviality over the wine cup 
to serious and dignified attention while the sentence 
of death was being passed on him. He stood with 
the napkin carelessly thrown over his arm, his hand 
lightly resting on one hip, and listened with grave 
calmness to the sentence; at its conclusion he re- 
lapsed into the convivial mood, exclaiming, "Troi- 
sieme couplet!" as he resumed his song; and you 
felt the irony of his gravity, felt the unutterable 
levity of his nature. 

In pathos of a domestic kind, and in outbursts 



88 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

of passion, Lemaitre was singularly affecting. When 
he played in "Paillasse," "Trente Ans de la Vie 
d'un Joueur," and "La Dame de St. Tropez," he 
left indelible impressions of pathos and of lurid 
power; but I must confess that I not only thought 
very little of his "Ruy Bias," but always doubted 
whether his style of acting were not essentially un- 
suited to the poetic drama. He seemed to feel 
himself ill at ease, walking upon stilts. His ex- 
pressions were conventional, and his gestures vehe- 
ment and often common. As the lackey he was 
ignoble; as the minister and lover his declamation 
was, to my thinking, cold and unimpassioned in its 
violence. This, however, was not the opinion of 
M. Victor Hugo, who, as a Frenchman and the 
author of the play, may be supposed to be a better 
judge than I am, and in fairness I will quote what 
he says in the appendix to his play: — "Quant a M. 
Frederic Lemaitre, qu'en dire? Les acclamations 
enthousiastes de la foule le saississent a son entree 
en scene [rather premature enthusiasm] 1 et le suivent 
jus-qu'apres le denouement. Reveur et profond au 
premier acte, melancolique au deuxieme, grand, 
passionne, et sublime au troisieme, il s'eleve au 
cinquieme a Fun de ses prodigieux effets tragiques 
du haut desquels Facteur rayonnant domine tous 
les souvenirs de son art. Pour les vieillards c'est 



FREDERIC LEMAITRE. 89 

Lekain et Garrick meles dans un seul homme; pour 
nous c'est Taction de Kean combinee avec l'emotion 
de Talma. Et puis, partout, a travers les eclairs 
eblouissants de son jeu, M. Frederic a des larmes, de 
ces vraies larmes qui font pleurer les autres, de ces 
larmes dont parle Horace: si vis me flere dolendum 
est primum ipsi tibi." 

In answer to such a dithyramb as this I can 
only appeal to the recollections of those readers 
who have seen Frederic play Ruy Bias. For myself 
I confess to have the smallest possible pleasure in 
a French actor when he is "profond et reveur;" 
and that not only did I detect no tears in Frederic's 
Ruy Bias, but his sublime tragic effects — what the 
French critics call "ses explosions" —left me wholly 
unmoved. Indeed, to speak of Lemaitre as a rival 
of Kean or Rachel seems to me like comparing 
Eugene Sue with Victor Hugo — the gulf that 
separates prose from poetry yawns between them. 

Lemaitre was very handsome. He had a won- 
derful eye, with large orbit, a delicate and sensitive 
mouth, a fine nose, a bold jaw, a figure singularly 
graceful, and a voice penetrating and sympathetic. 
He had great animal spirits, great daring, great fancy, 
and great energy of animal passion. He always created 
his parts— that is to say, gave them a specific stamp 
of individuality; and the creative activity of his 



go ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

imagination was seen in a hundred novel details. 
But as his physical powers decayed his acting be- 
came less and less effective; for in losing the per- 
sonal charm, it had no stage traditions to fall back 
upon. And the last time I saw him, which must 
be fourteen or fifteen years ago, he was rapidly 
degenerating; every now and then a flash of the 
old fire would be visible, but the effects were vanish- 
ing and the defects increasing. An interesting letter 
which recently appeared in the "Pall Mall Gazette" 
gave a graphic account of this great actor in the 
last stages of his ruin. I should be sorry to see 
the man who had once swayed audiences with irre- 
sistible power reduced to the painful feebleness 
which this correspondent describes. 



THE TWO KEELEYS. 9 1 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The two Keeleys. 

Among my very pleasantest recollections of the 
stage arise the figures of Keeley and his wife, each 
standing alone as a type of comic acting, and each 
markedly illustrating the truth so little understood, 
that acting, because it is a representative art, cannot 
be created by intelligence or sensibility (however 
necessary these may be for the perfection of the 
art), but must always depend upon the physical 
qualifications of the actor, these being the means 
of representation. It matters little what the actor 
feels; what he can express gives him his distinctive 
value. 

Keeley was undoubtedly equipped with unusual 
advantages, over and above his intelligence. His 
handsome, pleasant features set in a large fat face, 
his beetling brow and twinkling eye, his rotund 
little body, neither ungraceful nor inactive, at once 
prepossessed the spectator; and his unctuous voice 
and laugh completed the conquest. He was drol- 



92 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

lery personified; drollery without caricature, drollery 
without ugliness, drollery that had an arrilre pensie 
of cleverness, and nothing of harshness or extra- 
vagance. To define him by a comparison, he was 
a duodecimo Falstaff. 

Mrs. Keeley had little or none of the unctuous- 
ness of her husband, but she also was remarkably 
endowed. She was as intense and pointed as he 
was easy and fluent. She concentrated into her 
repartees an amount of intellectual vis and "devil" 
which gave such a feather to the shaft that authors 
must often have been surprised at the revelation to 
themselves of the force of their own wit. Eye, voice, 
gesture sparkled and chuckled. You could see that 
she enjoyed the joke, but enjoyed it rather as an 
intellectual triumph over others, than (as in Keeley's 
case) from an impersonal delight in the joke itself. 
Keeley was like a fat, happy, self-satisfied puppy, 
taking life easily, ready to get sniffing and enjoy- 
ment out of everything. Mrs. Keeley was like a 
sprightly kitten, eager to make a mouse of every 
moving thing. 

The humorous predominated in Keeley; in his 
wife the predominant mood was self-assertion: so 
that the one was naturally the comic servant, the 
other the pert soubrette. The one took kindly to 
his vices; he was a glutton, a liar, a coward, was 



THE TWO KEELEYS. 93 

kicked and bullied, and bemoaned his lot without 
ever forfeiting our good-will. He never made a 
pretence of virtue; he threw all his vices on his 
organisation — if blame had to be pronounced Na- 
ture must bear it. He was never despicable; even 
in the moments of abject terror (and no one could 
represent comic terror better than he did) somehow 
or other he contrived to make you feel that courage 
ought not to be expected of him, for cowardice was 
simply the natural trembling of that human jelly. 
He lied with a grace which made it a sort of truth 
— a personal and private truth. He chuckled over 
his sensuality in such an unsuspiciousness of moral 
candour, and with such an intensity of relish, that 
you almost envied his gulosity. He was, in fact, a 
great idealist. 

When people foolishly objected that he was 
"always Keeley," they forgot in the first place that 
an actor with so peculiar an organisation could not 
disguise his individuality; and in the second place, 
that, in spite of the familiar face, voice, and manner 
which necessarily reappeared under all disguises, 
the representative power of the actor did really dis- 
play itself in very various types. Keeley played 
many parts, and played them variously. No one 
who had seen his Sir Andrew Aguecheek could 
detect in it traces of Waddilove (in "To Parents 



94 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

and Guardians"); no one who had laughed at his 
Acres could recognise it in "Two o'Clock in the 
Morning;" no one who had enjoyed his terror in 
"A Thumping Legacy" could recognise the same 
type in "Box and Cox." In fact, the range of his 
creations was unusually wide, and I do not remem- 
ber to have seen him absolutely fail to represent 
the character, except in the single instance of Sir 
Hugh Evans, a part from which he was intellectually 
and physically excluded — the irritable, irascible, 
lean, pedantic Welsh parson being the very last 
kind of character which his representative powers 
could express. • 

It was not said of Mrs. Keeley that she was 
"always Mrs. Keeley," although in truth her strongly 
marked peculiarities were quite incapable of dis- 
guise; but she laid hold of some characteristic in 
the part she was playing, and rendered it with such 
sharpness of outline and such force of effect that 
her own individuality was lost sight of to the un- 
critical eye. Her physique was also more flexible 
than that of her husband, and she could "make up" 
better. Her perception of characteristics (within a 
certain range) was very acute: and sometimes she 
presented a character with extraordinary felicity. 
Did the reader happen to see her play the maid of 
all work in "Furnished Apartments"? He will not 



THE TWO KEELEYS. 95 

easily forget such a picture of the London "slavey," 
a stupid, wearied, slatternly good-natured dab, her 
brain confused by incessant bells, her vitality ebbing 
under overwork. He will not forget the dazed ex- 
pression, the limp exhaustion of her limbs, or the 
wonderful assemblage of rags which passed for her 
costume. There was something at once inexpres- 
sibly droll and pathetic in this picture. It was so 
grotesque, yet so real, that laughter ended in a 
sigh. 

In quite a different style was her performance 
of Bob Nettles (in "To Parents and Guardians"), 
the only representation of a masculine character 
by a woman that I remember to have seen with 
perfect satisfaction. She was the schoolboy in every 
look and gesture. 

It should be noted that whereas Keeley was 
eminently an idealist, and as capable of personat- 
ing characters in high and poetic comedy as in 
broad farce, Mrs. Keeley was eminently a realist, 
and her realism was always a disturbing tendency 
in poetic comedy. To see the two as Audrey and 
Touchstone was indeed to see acting the like of 
which has rarely been seen since; but her Audrey, 
though mirth-provoking, belonged altogether to an- 
other region of art than that of Keeley's Touch- 
stone. In the first place, it was unpoetic; in the 



96 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

second place, it was defective in that the stupidity 
was conscious stupidity — the mask of a sharp, keen 
face, not the stolidity of a country wench. When 
Keeley played Sir Andrew Aguecheek you had no 
suspicion of a keen, clear intellect lurking behind 
that fatuity; you felt that beef does harm the wit, 
and that he had been a great eater of beef. But 
when Mrs. Keeley's Audrey asks, "What is poetry? 
is it a true thing?" you heard in her accent, and 
saw in her eye, that she knew more about the mat- 
ter than Touchstone himself. 

Keeley could play a gentleman; Mrs. Keeley 
could never rise above the servants' hall. But, on 
the other hand, Mrs. Keeley had a power over the 
more energetic passions which he wanted; she was 
an excellent melodramatic actress, and her pathos 
drew tears. 

In Jerrold's capital little piece, "The Prisoners 
of War," Keeley and his wife were seen to great 
advantage. As the vulgar, bragging Englishman, 
despising Frenchmen and everything French because 
it was not Cockney, his idealism preserved the real 
comedy of the type from degenerating into gross 
caricature or unpleasant truthfulness. One re- 
cognised the national failing; but one liked the 
good-natured Briton. To hear him haughtily wave 
aside the objection to the taxes in England: "Taxes! 



THE TWO KEELEYS. 97 

We haven't the word in our language. There are 
two or three duties to be sure" (this was said with 
a mild candour, admitting what could not be of the 
slightest consequence); "but" (and here the buoyant 
confidence of superiority once more reappeared in 
his accent) "with us duties are pleasures." (And 
then following up with a hyperbole of assurance) 
"As for taxes, you'd make an Englishman stare only 
to mention such things." Not less amusing was his 
defence when reproached for this bragging: — 

Pall Mall. — As a sailor, isn't it your duty to die for your 
country? 

Firebrace. — Most certainly. 

Pall Mall. — As a civilian it is mine to lie for her. Courage 
isn't confined to fighting. No, no; whenever a Frenchman 
throws me down a He, for the honour of England I always 
trump it. 

The convincing logic of this used to set the 
house in a roar. But it was his manner which gave 
the joke its bouquet; and when he vindicated the 
superiority of the air of England over the air of 
France, on the ground that "it goes twice as far — 
it's twice as thick," the pit screamed with delight. 
Mrs. Keeley as Polly Pall Mall had an inferior part, 
but by her make up, and, above all, by the inimitable 
manner in which she read a letter interrupted by 
sobs, she raised the part into first-rate importance. 

Actors and Acting. 7 



• ■! 



98 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

It is an inestimable loss our stage has suffered 
by the departure of two such actors. Keeley was 
equally at home in broad farce, high comedy, and 
ideal scenes, always an idealist, always true, always 
humorous. Mrs. Keeley was great in farce, low 
comedy, and melodrama, pathetic and humorous, 
and always closely imitative of daily life. Their 
career was one uninterrupted triumph, and they live 
in the memory of playgoers with a halo of personal 
affection round their heads. 



SHAKSPEARE AS ACTOR AND CRITIC. 99 



CHAPTER IX. 

Shakspeare as Actor and Critic. 

Shakspeare was most probably an indifferent 
actor. If a doubt is permissible on this point, there 
is none respecting his mastery as a critic. He may 
not have been a brilliant executant; he was certainly 
a penetrating and reflective connoisseur. 

Modern idolaters, who cannot see faults in Shak- 
speare's plays which are still before us, and which 
to unbiassed eyes present defects both numerous 
and glaring, may perhaps consider it an impertinence 
to infer any defects in his acting, which is not be- 
fore us, which has long ceased to be remembered, 
and which never seems to have been much spoken 
of. Why not with a generous enthusiasm assume 
that it was fine? Why not suppose that the creator 
of so many living, breathing characters must have 
been also a noble personator? There is nothing to 
prevent the generous admirer indulging in this 
hypothesis if he finds comfort in it. I merely re- 
mark that it has no evidence in its favour; and a 

r 



IOO ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

great many points against it. The mere fact that 
we hear nothing of his qualities as an actor implies 
that there was nothing above the line, nothing 
memorable, to be spoken of. We hear of him as 
wit and companion, as poet and man of business, 
but not a word of his qualities as an actor. Of 
Burbage, Alleyn, Tarleton, Knell, Bentley, Miles, 
Wilson, Crosse, Pope, and others, we hear more or 
less; but all that tradition vaguely wafts to us of 
Shakspeare is, that he played the Ghost in "Hamlet," 
and Old Knowell in "Every Man in his Humour," 
neither of them parts which demand or admit vari- 
ous excellences. 

Like many other dramatists of the early time — 
Munday, Chettle, Lodge, Kyd, Nash, Ben Jonson, 
Heywood, Dekker, and Rowley — he adopted sock 
and buskin as a means of making money; and it 
is probable that, like actors of all times, he had a 
favourable opinion of his own performances. He 
certainly was able to see through the tricks and 
devices with which more popular players captivated 
"the groundlings," and was doubtless one of the 
"judicious" whom these devices grieved. But in 
spite of his marvellous genius, in spite of the large 
flexibility of mind which could enable him to con- 
ceive great varieties of character, it is highly pro- 
bable that he wanted the mimetic flexibility of 



SHAKSPEARE AS ACTOR AND CRITIC. IOI 

organisation which could alone have enabled him 
to personate what he conceived. The powers of 
conception and the powers of presentation are 
distinct. A poet is rarely a good reader of his 
own verse, and has never yet been a great per- 
sonator of his own characters. Shakspeare doubt- 
less knew — none knew so well — how Hamlet, 
Othello, Richard, and Falstaff should be per- 
sonated; but had he been called upon to personate 
them he would have found himself wanting in 
voice, face, and temperament. The delicate sensi- 
tiveness of his organisation, which is implied in 
the exquisitf ness and flexibility of his genius, would 
absolutely have unfitted him for the presentation 
of characters demanding a robust vigour and a 
weighty animalism. It is a vain attempt to paint 
frescoes with a camel's hair brush. The broad and 
massive effects necessary to scenic presentation 
could never have been produced by such a tem- 
perament as his. Thus even on the supposition of 
his having been a good drawing-room mime, he 
would have wanted the qualities of a good actor. 
And we have no ground for inferring that he was 
even a good drawing-room mime. 

I dare say he declaimed finely, as far as 
rhythmic cadence and a nice accentuation went. 
But his non-success implies that his voice was in- 



102 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

tractable, or limited in its range. Without a sym- 
pathetic voice, no declamation can be effective. 
The tones which stir us need not be musical, 
need not be pleasant even, but they must have a 
penetrating, vibrating quality. Had Shakspeare 
possessed such a voice he would have been famous 
as an actor. Without it all his other gifts were 
as nothing on the stage. Had he seen Garrick, 
Kemble, or Kean performing in plays not his own 
he might doubtless have perceived a thousand de- 
ficiencies in their conception, and defects in their 
execution; but had he appeared on the same stage 
with them, even in plays of his own, tr^e audiences 
would have seen the wide gulf between conception 
and presentation. One lurid look, one pathetic 
intonation, would have more power in swaying the 
emotions of the audience than all the subtle and 
profound passion which agitated the soul of the 
poet, but did not manifestly express itself: the look 
and the tone may come from a man so drunk as 
to be scarcely able to stand; but the public sees 
only the look, hears only the tone, and is irre- 
sistibly moved by these intelligible symbols. 

That Shakspeare, as a critic, had mastered the 
principles of the art of acting is apparent from 
the brief but pregnant advice to the players in 
"Hamlet." He first insists on the necessity of a 



.SHAKSPEARE AS ACTOR AND CRITIC. IO3 

flexible elocution. He gives no rules for the 
management of voice and accent; but in his 
emphatic warning against the common error of 
"mouthing," and his request to have the speech 
spoken "trippingly on the tongue," it is easy to 
perceive what he means. The word "trippingly," 
to modern ears, is not perhaps felicitously de- 
scriptive; but the context shows that it indicates 
easy naturalness as opposed to artificial mouthing. 
It is further enforced by the advice as to gesture: 
"Do not saw the air too much with your hand, but 
use all gently." 

After the management of the voice, actors most 
err in the management of the body: they mouth 
their sentences, and emphasise their gestures, in 
the effort to be effective, and in ignorance of the 
psychological conditions on which effects depend, 
In each case the effort to aggrandise natural ex- 
pression leads to exaggeration and want of truth. 
In attempting the Ideal they pass into the Artificial. 
The tones and gestures of ordinary unimpassioned 
moments would not, they feel, be appropriate to 
ideal characters and impassioned situations; and 
the difficulty of the art lies precisely in the selec- 
tion of idealised expressions which shall, to the 
spectator, be symbols of real emotions. All but 
very great actors are redundant in gesticulation; 



104 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

not simply overdoing the significant, but unable to 
repress insignificant movements. Shakspeare must 
have daily seen this; and therefore he bids the 
actor "suit the action to the word with this special 
observance, that you overstep not the modesty of 
nature; for anything so overdone is from the pur- 
pose of playing, whose end, both at first and now, 
was and is, to hold, as it were, the mirror up to 
nature." 

It would be worth the actor's while to borrow 
a hint from the story of Voltaire's pupil, when, to 
repress her tendency towards exuberant gesticula- 
tion, he ordered her to rehearse with her hands 
tied to her side. She began her recitation in this 
enforced quietness, but at last, carried away by 
the movement of her feelings, she flung up her 
arms, and snapped the threads. In tremor she 
began to apologise to the poet; he smiling re- 
assured her that the gesticulation was then ad- 
mirable, because it was irrepressible. If actors 
will study fine models they will learn that gestures, 
to be effective, must be significant, and to be 
significant they must be rare. To stand still on 
the stage (and not appear a guy) is one of the 
elementary difficulties of the art — and one which 
is rarely mastered. 

Having indicated his views on declamation, 



SHAKSPEARE AS ACTOR AND CRITIC. IO5 

Shakspeare proceeds to utter golden advice on ex- 
pression. He specially warns the actor against 
both over-vehemence and coldness. Remembering 
that the actor is an artist, he insists on the ob- 
servance of that cardinal principle in all art, the 
subordination of impulse to law, the regulation of 
all effects with a view to beauty. "In the very 
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of 
passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance 
that may give it smoothness. O! it offends me to 
the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow 
tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the 
ears of the groundlings." What is this but a re- 
cognition of the mastery of art, by which the ruling 
and creating intellect makes use of passionate sym- 
bols, and subordinates them to a pleasurable end? 
If the actor were really in a passion his voice 
would be a scream, his gestures wild and dis- 
orderly; he would present a painful, not an aesthetic 
spectacle. He must therefore select from out the 
variety of passionate expressions only those that can 
be harmoniously subordinated to a general whole. 
He must be at once passionate and temperate: 
trembling with emotion, yet with a mind in vigilant 
supremacy controlling expression, directing every 
intonation, look, and gesture. The rarity of fine 
acting depends on the difficulty there is in being 



106 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

at one and the same moment so deeply moved 
that the emotion shall spontaneously express itself 
in symbols universally intelligible, and yet so calm 
as to be perfect master of effects, capable of 
modulating voice and moderating gesture when 
they tend to excess or ugliness. 

"To preserve this medium between mouthing 
and meaning too little," says Colley Cibber, "to 
keep the attention more pleasingly awake by a 
tempered spirit than by mere vehemence of voice, 
is of all the master strokes of an actor the most 
difficult to reach." Some critics, annoyed by rant, 
complain of the ranter being "too fiery." As 
Lessing says, an actor cannot have too much fire, 
but he may easily have too little sense. Vehemence 
without real emotion is rant; vehemence with real 
emotion, but without art, is turbulence. To be 
loud and exaggerated is the easy resource of actors 
who have no faculty; to be vehement and agitated 
is to betray the inexperience of one who has not 
yet mastered the art. "Be not too tame neither," 
Shakspeare quickly adds, lest his advice should be 
misunderstooql, "but let your own discretion be 
your tutor." Yes; the actor's discretion must tell 
him when he has hit upon the right tone and right 
expression, which must first be suggested to him 
by his own feelings. In endeavouring to express 



SHAKSPEARE AS ACTOR AND CRITIC. IO7 

emotions, he will try various tones, various gestures, 
various accelerations and retardations of the rhythm; 
and during this tentative process his vigilant dis- 
cretion will arrest those that are effective, and dis- 
card the rest. 

It is because few actors are sufficiently reflective 
that good acting is so rare; and the tameness of a 
few who are reflective, but not passionate, brings 
discredit on reflection. Such study as actors mostly 
give is to imitation of others, rather than to in- 
trospection of their own means; and this is fatal to 
excellence. "Nous devons etre sensibles," said 
Talma once; "nous devons eprouver Pemotion; 
mais pour mieux Timiter, pour mieux en saisir les 
caracteres par l'etude et la reflexion." 

The anecdotes about Macready and Liston 
given on page 50 suggest a topic of some interest 
in relation to the art of acting: In how far does 
the actor feel the emotion he expresses? When 
we hear of Macready and Liston lashing themselves 
into a fury behind the scenes in order to come on 
the stage sufficiently excited to give a truthful re- 
presentation of the agitations of anger, the natural 
inference is that these artists recognised the truth 
of the popular notion which assumes that the actor 
really feels what he expresses. But this inference 
seems contradicted by experience. Not only is it 



I08 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

notorious that the actor is feigning, and that if he 
really felt what he feigns he would be unable to 
withstand the wear and tear of such emotion re- 
peated night after night; but it is indisputable, to 
those who know anything of art, that the mere 
presence of genuine emotion would be such a dis- 
turbance of the intellectual equilibrium as entirely 
to frustrate artistic expression. Talma told M. Bar- 
riere that he was once carried away by the truth 
and beauty of the actress playing with him till she 
recalled him by a whisper: "Take care, Talma, you 
are moved!" on which he remarked, "Cest qu'en 
effet de demotion nait le trouble: la voix resiste, 
la memoire manque, les gestes sont faux, l'effet est 
detruit;" and there is an observation of Mole to a 
similar effect: "Je ne suis pas content de moi ce 
soir; je me suis trop livre, je ne suis pas reste mon 
maitre: j'etais entre trop vivement dans la situa- 
tion; j'etais le personnage meme, je n'etais plus 
l'acteur qui le joue. J'ai ete vrai comme je le 
serais chez moi; pour Voptique du theatre il faut 
Vetre autrement" 

Everyone initiated into the secrets of the art of 
acting will seize at once the meaning of this 
luminous phrase Voptique du theatre; and the uni- 
tiated will understand how entirely opposed to all 
the purposes of art and all the secrets of effect 



SHAKSPEARE AS ACTOR AND CRITIC. IOO, 

would be the representation of passion in its real 
rather than in its symbolical expression: the red, 
swollen, and distorted features of grief, the harsh 
and screaming intonation of anger, are unsuited to 
art; the paralysis of all outward expression and the 
flurry and agitation of ungraceful gesticulation which 
belong to certain powerful emotions, may be de- 
scribed by the poet, but cannot be admitted into 
plastic art. The poet may tell us what is signified 
by the withdrawal of all life and movement from 
the face and limbs, describing the internal agita- 
tions, or the deadly calm which disturb or paralyse 
the sufferer; but the painter, sculptor, or actor must 
tell us what the sufferer undergoes, and tell it 
through the symbols of outward expression — the 
internal workings must be legible in the external 
symbols; and these external symbols must also 
have a certain grace and proportion to affect us 
aesthetically. 

All art is symbolical. If it presented emotion 
in its real expression it would cease to move us as 
art; sometimes cease to move us at all, or move us 
only to laughter. There is a departure from reality 
in all the stage-accessories. The situation, the cha- 
racter, the language, all are at variance with daily 
experience. Emotion does not utter itself in verse 
nor in carefully chosen sentences; and to speak 



IIO ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

verse with the negligence of prose is a serious fault. 
There is a good passage in Colley Cibber's account 
of Betterton, which actors, and critics who are not 
alive to the immense effects that lie in fine elocu- 
tion, would do well to ponder on. "In the just 
delivery of poetical numbers, particularly where the 
sentiments are pathetic, it is scarce credible upon 
how minute an article of sound depends their 
greatest beauty or inaffection. The voice of a 
singer is not more strictly ty'd to Time and Tune, 
than that of an actor in theatrical elocution. The 
least syllable too long, or too slightly dwelt upon 
in a period, depreciates it to nothing; which very 
syllable, if rightly touched, shall, like the heighten- 
ing stroke of light from a master's pencil, give life 
and spirit to the whole." It is superfluous to insist 
on the utter impossibility of attending to such 
delicate minutiae if the speaker be really agitated by 
emotion. A similar remark applies to all the other 
details of his art. His looks and gestures, his posi- 
tion in the picture, all will be out of proportion 
and fail of their due effect unless he is master of 
himself. 

The reader sees at once that as a matter of fact 
the emotions represented by the actor are not 
agitating him as they would agitate him in reality; 
he is feigning, and we know that he is feigning; he 



SHAKSPEARE AS ACTOR AND CRITIC. 1 1 I 

is representing a fiction which is to move us as a 
fiction, and not to lacerate our sympathies as they 
would be lacerated by the agony of a fellow-crea- 
ture actually suffering in our presence. The tears 
we shed are tears welling from a sympathetic 
source; but their salt bitterness is removed, and 
their pain is pleasurable. 

But now arises the antinomy, as Kant would call 
it — the contradiction which perplexes judgment. If 
the actor lose all power over his art under the dis- 
turbing influence of emotion, he also loses all 
power over his art in proportion to his deadness to 
emotion. If he really feel, he cannot act; but he 
cannot act unless he feel. All the absurd efforts 
of mouthing and grimacing actors to produce an 
effect, all the wearisomeness of cold conventional 
representation — mimicry without life — we know to 
be owing to the unimpassioned talent of the actor. 
Observe, I do not say to his unimpassioned nature. 
It is quite possible for a man of exquisite sensibility 
to be ludicrously tame in his acting, if he has not 
the requisite talent of expression, or has not yet 
learned how to modulate it so as to give it due 
effect. The other day in noticing the rare ability 
of Mdle. Lucca in depicting the emotions of Mar- 
garet in "Faust," I had occasion to remark on the 
surprising transformation which had taken place in 



112 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

two years, changing her from a feeble conventional 
ineffective actress, into a passionate, subtle, and 
original artist. In the practice of two years she 
had learned the secrets of expression; she had 
learned to modulate; and having learnt this, having 
felt her way, she could venture to give play to the 
suggestions of her impulses, which before that had 
doubtless alarmed her. But although it is quite 
possible for an actor to have sensibility without 
the talent of expression, and therefore to be a tame 
actor though an impassioned man, it is wholly im- 
possible for him to express what he has never felt, 
to be an impassioned actor with a cold nature. 

And here is the point of intersection of the two 
lines of argument just followed out. The condition 
being that a man must feel emotion if he is to ex- 
press it, for if he does not feel it he will not know 
how to express it, how can this be reconciled with 
the impossibility of his affecting us aesthetically 
while he is disturbed by emotion? In other words: 
how far does he really feel the passion he ex- 
presses? It is a question of degree. As in all art, 
feeling lies at the root, but the foliage and flowers, 
though deriving their sap from emotion, derive their 
form and structure from the intellect. The poet 
cannot write while his eyes are full of tears, while 
his nerves are trembling from the mental shock, 



SHAKSPEARE AS ACTOR AND CRITIC. 1 1 3 

and his hurrying thoughts are too agitated to settle 
into definite tracks. But he must have felt, or his^ 
verse will be a mere echo. It is from the memory 
of past feelings that he draws the beautiful image 
with which he delights us. He is tremulous again 
under the remembered agitation, but it is a pleasant 
tremor, and in no way disturbs the clearness of his 
intellect. He is a spectator of his own tumult; and 
though moved by it, can yet so master it as to 
select from it only these elements which suit his 
purpose. We are all spectators of ourselves; but it 
is the peculiarity of the artistic nature to indulge 
in such introspection even in moments of all but 
the most disturbing passion, and to draw thence 
materials for art. This is true also of the fine 
actor, and many of my readers will recognise the 
truth of what Talma said of himself: — "I have suf- 
fered cruel losses, and have often been assailed 
with profound sorrows; but after the first moment 
when grief vents itself in cries and tears, I have 
found myself involuntarily turning my gaze inwards 
("je faisais un retour sur mes souffrances"), and 
found that the actor was unconsciously studying 
the man, and catching nature in the act." It is 
only by thus familiarising oneself with the nature 
of the various emotions, that one can properly in- 
terpret them. But even that is not enough. They 

Actors and Acting, 8 



114 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

must be watched in others, the interpreting key 
being given in our own consciousness. Having 
something like an intellectual appreciation of the 
sequences of feeling and their modes of manifesta- 
tion, the actor has next to select out of these such 
as his own physical qualifications enable him to 
reproduce effectively, and such as will be universally 
intelligible. To quote Talma once more: — "Oui, 
nous devons etre sensibles, nous devons eprouver 
l'emotion; mais pour mieux l'imiter, pour mieux en 
saisir les caracteres par l'etude et la reflexion. 
Notre art en exige de profonds. Point d'improvisa- 
tion possible sur la scene sous peine d'echec. Tout 
est calcule, tout doit etre prevu, et l'emotion qui 
semble soudaine, et le trouble qui parait involon- 
taire. L'intonation, le geste, le regard qui semblent 
inspires, ont ete repetes cent fois." 

All this I may assume the reader to accept 
without dissent, and yet anticipate his feeling some 
perplexity in reconciling it with the anecdotes which 
started this digression. Surely, he may say, neither 
Macready nor Liston could have been so unfamiliar 
with rage and its manifestations that any hesitation 
could paralyse their efforts to express these. Why 
then this preparation behind the scenes? Simply 
because it was absolutely necessary that they should 
be in a state of excitement if they were to re- 



SHAKSPEARE AS ACTOR AND CRITIC. 1 1 5 

present it with truthfulness; and having tempera- 
ments which were not instantaneously excitable by 
the mere imagination of a scene, they prepared 
themselves. Actors like Edmund Kean, Rachel, or 
Lemaitre found no difficulty in the most rapid transi- 
tions; they could one moment chat calmly and 
the next explode. The imaginative sympathy in- 
stantaneously called up all the accessories of ex- 
pression; one tone would send vibrations through 
them powerful enough to excite the nervous dis- 
charge. 

The answer to the question, How far does the 
actor feel? is, therefore, something like this: He is 
in a state of emotional excitement sufficiently strong 
to furnish him with the elements of expression, but 
not strong enough to disturb his consciousness of 
the fact that he is only imagining — sufficiently 
strong to give the requisite tone to his voice and 
aspect to his features, but not strong enough to 
prevent his modulating the one and arranging the 
other according to a preconceived standard. His 
passion must be ideal — sympathetic, not personal. 
He may hate with a rival's hate the actress to 
whom he is manifesting tenderness, or love with a 
husband's love the actress to whom he is express- 
ing vindictiveness; but for Juliet or Desdemona he 
must feel love and wrath. One day Malibran up- 

8* 



I 1 6 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

braiding Templeton for his coldness towards her in 
the love scenes of "La Sonnambula," asked him if 
he were not married, and told him to imagine that 
she was his wife. The stupid tenor, entirely mis- 
understanding her, began to be superfluously tender 
at rehearsal, whereupon she playfully recalled to 
him that it was during the performance he was to 
imagine her to be Mrs. Templeton — at rehearsal, 
Mdme. Malibran. 

We sometimes hear amateur critics object to 
fine actors that they are every night the same, 
never varying their gestures of their tones. This is 
stigmatised as "mechanical"; and the critics in- 
nocently oppose to it some ideal or their own which 
they call "inspiration." Actors would smile at such 
nonsense. What is called inspiration is the mere 
haphazard of carelessness or incompetence; the 
actor is seeking an expression which he ought to 
have found when studying his part. What would 
be thought of a singer who sang his aria differently 
every night? In the management of his breath, in 
the distribution of light and shade, in his phrasing, 
the singer who knows how to sing never varies. 
The timbre of his voice, the energy of his spirit, 
may vary; but his methods are invariable. Actors 
learn their parts as singers learn their songs. Every 
detail is deliberative, or has been deliberated. The 



SHAKSPEARE AS ACTOR AND CRITIC. I I 7 

very separation of Art from Nature involves this 
calculation. The sudden flash of suggestion which 
is called inspiration may be valuable, it may be 
worthless: the artistic intellect estimates the value, 
and adopts or rejects it accordingly. 

Trusting to the inspiration of the moment is 
like trusting to a shipwreck for your first lesson in 
swimming. 

A greater master of the art, practical and theo- 
retical, as actor and teacher, the late M. Sanson, 
of the Theatre Francais, has well said: 

Me'ditez, reglez tout, essayez tout d'avance ; 
Un assidu travail donne la confiance. 
L'aisance est du talent le plus aimable attrait : 
Unjeu bun prepare nous semble sans appret. 

And elsewhere: 

Mais, en s'abandonnant, que l'artiste s'observe; 
De vos heureux hasards sachez vous souvenir : 
Ce qu'il n'a pas produit, l'art doit le retenir, 
L'acteur qui du talent veut atteindre le faite, 
Quand il livre son coeur doit conserver sa tete. * 

Shakspeare, who had learned this in his ex- 
perience as a dramatist, saw that it was equally true 
of dramatic representation. The want of calcula- 

* L?Art Thedtral, Chant I. Every studious actor should 
meditate the counsels of this excellent work. 



I 1 8 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

tion in actors distressed him. He saw the public 
applauding players "who having neither the accent 
of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor 
man, have so strutted and bellowed" that they 
seemed the products of nature's journeymen. He 
saw them mistaking violence for passion, turbulence 
for art, and he bade them remember the purpose 
of playing, which was to hold the mirror up to 
nature. 

Besides these cardinal directions, Shakspeare 
gives another which is of minor importance, though 
it points at a real evil. Avoid gag, he says. It 
will make some barren spectators laugh, but it 
shows a pitiful ambition. This, however, is a fault 
which the audience can correct if it please. Gene- 
rally audiences are so willing to have their laughter 
excited as to be indifferent to the means employed. 
Gagging, therefore, is, always was, and always will 
be popular. I merely allude to it to show how 
complete is Shakspeare's advice to the players, and 
how seriously he had considered the whole subject 
of acting. 



ON NATURAL ACTING. I I Q 



CHAPTER X. 

On Natural Acting. 

It has commonly been held to be a dexterous 
and delicate compliment to Garrick's acting that 
Fielding has paid through the humorous criticisms 
of Partridge, who saw nothing admirable in "the 
terror of the little man," but thought the actor who 
played the king was deserving of great praise. "He 
speaks all his words distinctly, half as loud again 
as the other. Anybody may see he is an actor." 
I cannot say what truth there was in Patridge's ap- 
preciation of Garrick, but if his language is to be 
interpreted as Fielding seems to imply, the intended 
compliment is a sarcasm. Partridge says, with a 
contemptuous sneer, "He the best player! Why, I 
could act as well as he myself. I am sure if I had 
seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same 
manner, and done just as he did." 

Now assuming this to be tolerably near the 
truth, it implies that Garrick's acting was what is 
called "natural;" but not the natural presentation 



120 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

of a Hamlet. The melancholy sceptical prince in 
the presence of his father's ghost must have felt a 
tremulous and solemn awe, but cannot have felt 
the vulgar terror of a vulgar nature; yet Partridge 
says, "If that little man upon the stage is not fright- 
ened, I never saw any man frightened in my life." 
The manner of a frightened Partridge can never 
have been at all like the manner of Hamlet. Let 
us turn to Colley Cibber's remarks on Betterton, if 
we would see how a great actor represented the 
emotion: "You have seen a Hamlet, perhaps, who 
on the first appearance of his father's spirit has 
thrown himself into all the straining vociferation 
requisite to express rage and fury, and the house 
has thundered with applause, though the misguided 
actor was all the while tearing a passion into rags. 
I am the more bold to offer you this particular in- 
stance because the late Mr. Addison, while I sate 
by him to see this scene acted, made the same ob- 
servation, asking me, with some surprise, if I thought 
Hamlet should be in so violent a passion with the 
ghost, which, though it might have astonished, it 
had not provoked him. For you may observe that 
in this beautiful speech the passion never rises 
beyond an almost breathless astonishment, or an 
impatience limited by filial reverence to enquire 
into the suspected wrongs that may have raised 



ON NATURAL ACTING. 121 

him from his peaceful tomb, and a desire to know 
what a spirit so seemingly distressed might wish or 
enjoin a sorrowful son to execute towards his future 
quiet in the grave. This was the light into which 
Betterton threw this scene; which he opened with a 
pause of mute amazement, then slowly rising to a 
solemn trembling voice he made the ghost equally 
terrible to the spectator as to himself. And in the 
descriptive part of the natural emotions which the 
ghastly visions gave him, the boldness of his ex- 
postulation was still governed by decency, manly 
but not braving; his voice never rising to that seem- 
ing outrage or wild defiance of what he naturally 
revered. But, alas! to preserve this medium between 
mouthing and meaning too little, to keep the atten- 
tion more pleasingly awake by a tempered spirit 
than by mere vehemence of voice, is of all the 
master-strokes of an actor the most difficult to 
reach." 

It is obvious that the naturalness required from 
Hamlet is very different from the naturalness of a 
Partridge; and Fielding made a great mistake in 
assimilating the representation of Garrick to the 
nature of a serving man. We are not necessarily 
to believe that Garrick made this mistake; but on 
the showing of his eulogist he fell into an error 
quite as reprehensible as the error of the actor who 



122 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

played the king, and whose stMted declamation was 
recognised by Partridge as something like acting. 
That player had at least a sense of the optique du 
thidtre which demanded a more elevated style than 
would have suited the familiarity of daily inter- 
course. He knew he was there to act, to represent 
a king, to impress an idealised image on the spec- 
tator's mind, and he could not succeed by the 
naturalness of his own manner. That he failed in 
his attempt proves that he was an imperfect artist; 
but the attempt was an attempt at art. Garrick 
(assuming the accuracy of Fielding's description) 
failed no less egregiously, though in a different 
way. He was afraid of being stilted, and he 
relapsed into vulgarity. He tried to be natural, 
without duly considering the kind of nature that 
was to be represented. The supreme difficulty of 
an actor is to represent ideal character with such 
truthfulness that it shall affect us as real, not to 
drag down ideal character to the vulgar level. 
His art is one of representation, not of illusion. 
He has to use natural expressions, but he must 
sublimate them; the symbols must be such as we 
can sympathetically interpret, and for this purpose 
they must be the expressions of real human feeling; 
but just as the language is poetry, or choice prose, 
purified from the hesitancies, incoherences, and im- 



ON NATURAL ACTING. I 23 

perfections of careless daily speech, so must his 
utterance be measured, musical, and incisive — his 
manner typical and pictorial. If the language 
depart too widely from the logic of passion and 
truthfulness, we call it bombast; if the elevation of 
the actor's style be not sustained by natural feeling, 
we call it mouthing and rant; and if the language 
fall below the passion we call it prosaic and flat; 
as we call the actor tame if he cannot present the 
character so as to interest us. The most general 
error of authors, and of actors, is turgidity rather 
than flatness. The striving to be effective easily 
leads into the error of exaggeration. But it by no 
means follows, as some persons seem to imply, that 
because exaggeration is a fault, tameness is a merit. 
Exaggeration is a fault because it is an untruth; but 
in art it is as easy to be untrue by falling below as 
by rising above naturalness. 

The acting of Mr. Horace Wigan, as the pious 
banker in "The Settling Day," which suggested 
these remarks, is quite as much below the truth of 
nature in its tameness and absence of individuality, 
as it would have been above the truth had he re- 
presented the conventional stage hypocrite. He 
did not by exaggeration shock our common sense; 
but neither did he delight our artistic sense by his 
art. If his performance was without offence, it was 



124 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

also without charm. Some of the audience were 
doubtless gratified to notice the absence of con- 
ventionalism; but I suspect that the majority were 
tepid in their admiration; and critics would ask 
whether Mr. Horace Wigan could have given a 
strongly-marked individuality to the character, and 
at the same time have preserved the ease and na- 
turalness which the representation demanded. Is 
he not like some novelists, who can be tolerably 
natural so long as they are creeping on the level 
of everyday incident and talk, but who become 
absurdly unnatural the instant they have to rise to 
the "height of their high argument" either in cha- 
racter or passion? Miss Austen's novels are marvels 
of art, because they are exquisitely true, and inter- 
esting in their truth. Miss Austen's imitators fondly 
imagine that to be quiet and prosaic — in pages 
which might as well have been left unwritten — is 
all that the simplicity of art demands. But in art, 
simplicity is economy, not meagreness: it is the 
absence of superfluities, not the suppression of 
essentials; it arises from an ideal generalisation of 
real and essential qualities, guided by an exquisite 
sense of proportion. 

If we once understand that naturalness in acting 
means truthful presentation of the character indi- 
cated by the author, and not the foisting of conv 



ON NATURAL ACTING. 1.2 5 

monplace manner on the stage, there will be a 
ready recognition of each artist's skill, whether he 
represent the naturalness of a FalstarT, or the na- 
turalness of a Sir Peter Teazle, the naturalness of a 
Hamlet, or the naturalness of Coriolanus. Kean in 
Shylock was natural; Bouffe in Pere Grandet. Rachel 
in Phedre was natural; Farren in Grandfather White- 
head. Keeley in Waddilove was natural; Charles 
Mathews in Affable Hawk, and Got in Maitre Guerin. 
Naturalness being truthfulness, it is obvious that a 
coat-and- waistcoat realism demands a manner, de- 
livery, and gesture wholly unlike the poetic realism 
of tragedy and comedy; and it has been the great 
mistake of actors that they have too often brought 
with them intg the drama of ordinary life the style 
they have been accustomed to in the drama of 
ideal life. 

The modern French actors have seen the error; 
and some English actors have followed their ex- 
ample, and aimed at greater quietness and "natural- 
ness." At the Olympic this is attended with some 
success. But even French actors, when not ex- 
cellent, carry the reaction too far; and in the at- 
tempt to be natural forget the optique du theatre, 
and the demands of art. They will sit upon side 
sofas, and speak with their faces turned away from 
the audience, so that half their words are lost; and 



126 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

they will lounge upon tables, and generally comport 
themselves in a manner which is not only easy, but 
free and easy. The art of acting is not shown in 
giving a conversational tone and a drawing-room 
quietness, but in vividly presenting character, while 
never violating the proportions demanded on the 
one hand by the optique du theatre, and on the other 
by what the audience will recognise as truth. 

This judgment, and the principles on which it 
was based, appear to have found little favour in 
certain quarters; and a writer in the Reader has at- 
tacked me in two columns of sarcasm and argu- 
ment. He says, in reference to my article, that 
"few things are more painful than, the nonsense 
which an exceedingly clever man may write about 
an art with which he has no real sympathy, to which 
he has ceased to give any serious thought." I leave 
it to my readers to appreciate my imperfect sym- 
pathy and want of serious thought; as to the non- 
sense I may have written, everyone knows how easily 
a man may set down nonsense, and believe it to 
be sense. The point which most pressingly forces 
itself upon me is, that a writer who has given such 
prolonged and serious thought to the art of acting 
as my critic may be supposed to have given, should 
nevertheless have not yet mastered the initial prin- 



ON NATURAL ACTING. I2J 

ciples on which that art rests. It is to me amazing 
how any man writing ex profess o, could cite Kean 
and Emil Devrient among natural actors, belonging 
to a "school of acting in which nature is carefully 
and closely followed, and in which small attention 
is paid to idealised impressions." I cannot explain 
how this writer's "serious thought" should have left 
him still in the condition of innocence which sup- 
poses that Art is delusion, not illusion; and that 
the nearer the approach to every-day vulgarity of 
detail the more consummate is the artistic effect 

In trying to disengage the question of "natural- 
ness" from its ambiguities, I referred to the criticism 
of Garrick's Hamlet which Fielding conveys through 
the verdict of Partridge, my object being to dis- 
criminate between the nature of Hamlet and the 
nature of Partridge; and I said that if Fielding were 
to be understood as correctly indicating Garrick's 
manner, that manner must have been false to na- 
ture and therefore bad art. On this my critic ob- 
serves : — 

"The reasons for this remarkable opinion are 
very shortly given. The melancholy sceptical prince 
in the presence of his father's ghost must have felt 
a tremulous and solemn awe, but cannot have felt 
the vulgar terror of a vulgar nature. The manner 
of a frightened Partridge can never have been at 



J 28 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

all like the manner of Hamlet. It is obvious that 
the naturalness required from Hamlet is very dif- 
ferent from the naturalness of a Partridge; and 
Fielding made a great mistake in assimilating the 
representation of Garrick to the nature of a serving- 
man. Ordinary people might find some difficulty 
in attaining the certainty which 'L.' has on his sub- 
ject. Very few men are so fortunate as to know a 
prince; fewer still have had the advantage of meet- 
ing ghosts; it is therefore difficult for most of us to 
realise so definitely as 'L.' does what the manner 
of a prince towards a ghost would be. But the 
rather positive critic may be assumed to be right. 
Probably, if a ghost walked into Marlborough 
House, the manner of the Prince of Wales towards 
the intruder would be very different from that of 
the footman." 

The answer to this is very simple. The manner 
of Hamlet must be the manner consistent with that 
of an ideal prince, and not the manner of a serving 
man, nor of one real prince, in Marlborough House 
or elsewhere. Had Shakspeare conceived a prince 
stupid, feeble, weak-eyed, weak-chested, or bold, 
coarse, and sensual, the actor would have been 
called upon to represent the ideals of these. But 
having conceived a princely Hamlet, i. e. an accom- 
plished, thoughtful, dreamy young man — to repre- 



ON NATURAL ACTING. 120, 

sent him as frightened at the ghost and behaving as 
a serving-man would behave, was not natural, con- 
sequently not ideal, for ideal treatment means treat- 
ment which is true to the nature of the character re- 
presented under the technical conditions of the repre- 
sentation. 

This leads me to the main point at issue. I have 
always emphatically insisted on the necessity of 
actors being true to nature in the expression of na- 
tural emotions, although the technical conditions 
of the art forbid the expressions being exactly 
those of real life; but my critic, not understanding 
this, says: — 

"In justice to 'L.,' however, it should be stated 
that he does not altogether object to natural acting, 
but only to acting which follows nature very closely. 
Being a writer who constructs as well as destroys, 
he explains what real dramatic art is. An actor 
should impress an idealised image on the spectator's 
mind; he should 'use natural expressions, but he 
must sublimate them/ whatever that may mean; his 
utterance must be 'measured, musical, and incisive; 
his manner typical and pictorial.'" 

It is clear not only from this passage, but from 
the examples afterwards cited, that my critic con- 
siders the perfection of art to lie in the closest re- 
production of every-day experience. That an actor 

Actors and Acting. 9 



130 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

should raise the natural expressions into ideal ex- 
pressions — that he should "sublimate" them is so 
little understood by my critic, that he professes not 
to know what sublimating "may mean." I will not 
insult him by supposing that it is the word which 
puzzles him, or that he does not understand 
Dryden's verses: — 

As his actions rose, so raise they still their vein, 

In words whose weight best suits a sublimated strain. 

But I will ask him if he supposes that an actor, hav- 
ing to represent a character in situations altogether 
exceptional, and speaking a language very widely 
departing from the language of ordinary life, would 
be true to the nature of that character and that 
language, by servilely reproducing the manners, 
expression, and intonations of ordinary life? The 
poet is not closely following nature; the poet is 
ideal in his treatment; is the actor to be less so? 
I am presumed to have been guilty of talking non- 
sense in requiring that the musical verse of the 
poet should be spoken musically, or the elaborate 
prose of the prose dramatist should be spoken with 
measured cadence and incisive effect. I cannot be 
supposed to approve of measured "mouthing," or 
to wish for turgidity in wishing for music and pre- 
cision; would the critic have verse declaimed like 



ON NATURAL ACTING. 131 

prose (naturally, as it is falsely called,) and prose 
gabbled with little reference to cadence and em- 
phasis, like ordinary talk? When he objects to the 
manner being typical, would he have it not to be 
recognisable? When he objects to the manner 
being pictorial, would he have it careless, ungrace- 
ful, the slouching of club-rooms and London streets 
carried into Verona or the Ardennes? Obviously, 
the pictorial manner which would be natural (ideal) 
to Romeo or Rosalind, would be unnatural in Charles 
Surface or Lady Teazle. 

But so little does this writer discriminate be- 
tween music and mouthing that he says: — 

"The performers may not come up to his 
standard, but it is satisfactory to think that their 
aim is in the right direction. No one will ever 
accuse Mr. Phelps or Mr. Creswick, or Miss Helen 
Faucit, of being too natural. These artists cer- 
tainly have a highly idealised style. Their utterance 
may not be musical, but it is measured and incisive 
— with a vengeance. On the French stage things 
are less satisfactory. Many of the leading actors 
there have a foolish hankering after nature. The 
silly people who think that French acting is some- 
times admirable, and that English acting is generally 
execrable, should correct their opinions by studying 
the canons of a higher criticism; for the Paris actors 

9* 



132 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

have essentially shallow views of their art. Got, in 
that marvellous passage in 'Le Due Job/ which has 
made grey-haired men cry like children, is much in 
error. He merely behaves just as a warm-hearted 
man would behave on suddenly receiving the news 
of a dear friend's death; and this has been thought 
to make his performance so intensely touching. But 
it is quite wrong; his language is not 'measured, 
musical, and incisive/ his manner decidedly not 
'typical and pictorial.' Sanson, with his satirical 
bonhomie in 'Le Fils de Giboyer/ has been much 
admired, because, having to act the Marquis d'Au- 
berive, he was so precisely like a French nobleman 
of the old regime. His business, he should have 
learnt, was not to resemble a real marquis, but to 
'impress the idealised image' of a marquis upon 
the spectator's mind. The terrible reality of De- 
launay's acting in the last scene of 'On ne badine 
pas avec 1' Amour' has made many spectators shud- 
der; but then it is so perfectly natural, the ex- 
pressions are not the least 'sublimated.'" 

If he knew more of the French stage, he would, 
I think, have paused before writing such a passage. 
He would know that Rachel was supreme in virtue 
of those very qualities which he asserts the French 
actors to have relinquished in their hankering after 
nature; he would know that Mdme. Plessy is the 



ON NATURAL ACTING. 133 

most musical, the most measured, the most incisive 
speaker (whether of verse or prose) now on the 
stage; he would know that Got, Sanson, andRegnier 
are great actors, because they represent types, and 
the types are recognised as true." 

When we are told that Got "merely behaves 
just as a warm-hearted man would behave on sud- 
denly receiving the news of a dear friend's death," 
we ask what warm : hearted man? A hundred 
different men would behave in a hundred different 
ways on such an occasion, would say different 
things, would express their emotions with different 
looks and gestures. The actor has to select. He 
must be typical. His expressions must be those 
which, while they belong to the recognised symbols 
of our common nature, have also the peculiar in- 
dividual impress of the character represented. It 
is obvious, to anyone who reflects for a moment, 
that nature is often so reticent — that men and 
women express so little in their faces and gestures, 
or in their tones of what is tearing their hearts — 
that a perfect copy of almost any man's expressions 
would be utterly ineffective on the stage. It is the 
actor's art to express in well-known symbols what 
an individual man may be supposed to feel, and 
we, the spectators recognising these expressions, are 
thrown into a state of sympathy. Unless the actor 



134 0N ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

follows nature sufficiently to select symbols that are 
recognised as natural, he fails to touch us; but as 
to any minute fidelity in copying the actual manner 
of murderers, misers, avengers, broken-hearted 
fathers, &c, we really have had so little experience 
of such characters, that we cannot estimate the 
fidelity; hence the actor is forced to be as typical 
as the poet is. Neither pretends closely to copy 
nature, but only to represent nature sublimated into 
the ideal. The nearer the approach to every-day 
reality implied by the author in his characters and 
language — the closer the coat-and-waistcoat realism 
of the drama — the closer must be the actor's imita- 
tion of every-day manner; but even then he must 
idealise, i.e. select and heighten — and it is for his 
tact to determine how much. 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 35 



CHAPTER XL 

Foreign Actors on our Stage. 

That our drama is extinct as literature, and our 
stage is in a deplorable condition of decline, no 
one ventures to dispute; but there are two opinions 
as to whether a revival is^ possible, or even pro- 
bable; and various opinions as to the avenues 
through which such a revival may be approached. 
There are three obvious facts which may be urged 
against the suggestions of hope: these are, the 
gradual cessation of all attempts at serious dramatic 
literature, and their replacement by translations 
from the French, or adaptations from novels; the 
slow extinction of provincial theatres, which formed 
a school for the rearing of actors; and, finally, the 
accident of genius on our stage being unhappily 
rarer than ever. In the face of these undeniable 
facts, the hopeful are entitled to advance facts of 
equal importance on their side. Never in the history 
of our stage were such magnificent rewards within 
the easy grasp of talent; never were there such 



I36 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

multitudes to welcome good acting. . Only let the 
dramatist, or the actor, appear, and not London 
alone but all England, not England alone but all 
Europe, will soon resound with his name. Dramatic 
literature may be extinct, but the dramatic instinct 
is ineradicable. The stage may be in a deplorable 
condition at present, but the delight in mimic re- 
presentation is primal and indestructible. Thus it 
is that, in spite of people on all sides declaring 
that "they have ceased to go to the theatre," no 
sooner does an actor arise who is at all above the 
line, no sooner does a piece appear that has any 
special source of attraction, than the public flock to 
the theatre as it never flocked in what are called 
"the palmy days" of the drama. Fechter could 
play Hamlet for seventy consecutive nights: which 
to Garrick, Kemble, or Edmund Kean, would have 
sounded like the wildest hyperbole; and the greatest 
success of Liston and Mathews seems insignificant 
beside the success of Lord Dundreary. There is 
a ready answer to such facts conveyed in the sneer 
at public taste, and the assertion that all intelligence 
has departed, leaving only a vulgar craving for 
"sensation pieces." It is a cheap sneer. Sensation 
pieces are in the ascendant, but this is not because 
intelligence has departed, and there is no audience 
for better things, but simply because the number 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 137 

of pleasure-seekers is so much increased; and at all 
times the bulk of the public has cared less for art 
than amusement* If intelligent people now go to 
witness inferior pieces, it is because better things 
are not produced; and sensation pieces, although 
appealing to the lowest faculties, do appeal to them 
effectively. If there are crowds to see the " Colleen 
Bawn" and the "Duke's Motto," it is because these 
pieces are really good of their kind; the kind may 
be a low kind; but will anyone say that the legi- 
timate drama has of late years been represented in 
a style to satisfy an intellectual audience? Who 
would leave the "comforts of the Saut-market" for 
the manifold discomforts of a theatre, unless some 
strong intellectual or emotional stimulus were to 
be given in exchange? and who can be expected 
to submit with patience to lugubrious comedy and 
impossible tragedy, such .as has been offered of late 
years to the British public? Considering that these 
"higher efforts" had so dreary an effect, what won- 
der that even the intelligent public sought amuse- 
ment in efforts which were not so exalted, but 
really did amuse? A public seeks amusement at 
the theatre, and turns impatiently from dreariness 

* Et pour les sots acteurs 
Dieu crea le faux gout et les sots spectateurs. 

Sanson: VArt Theatral. 



I38 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

to Dundreariness. Let an Edmund Kean — or any- 
faint approach to an Edmund Kean — appear to- 
morrow, and the public will rush to see him as they 
rushed to hear Jenny Lind: the mob, because easily 
pleased, will rush to see anyone about whom the 
world is talking; the intelligent public, because 
always ready to welcome genius. The proof of 
this eagerness to welcome any exceptional talent is 
seen in the success of Fechter and Ristori; and, in 
another direction, the proof of the deplorable con- 
dition of our stage is seen in the success of Mdlle. 
Stella Colas. Fechter and Ristori are both accom- 
plished actors; not great actors, but still, within the 
limits of their powers, possessed of the mechanism 
of their art; gifted, moreover, with physical and in- 
tellectual advantages which render them admirable 
representatives of certain parts. Mdlle. Colas, on 
the contrary, though she is sweetly pretty, and has 
a sympathetic voice, and a great deal of untrained 
energy, is not yet an actress; there are only the 
possibilities of an actress in her. 

The disadvantages of a language unfamiliar as 
a spoken language to the great bulk of the audience, 
and of companions who are scarcely on a level 
with the actors in the open-air theatres of Italy, 
have not prevented Ristori from achieving an im- 
mense success; nor have the terrible disadvantages 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 39 

of an intonation and pronunciation which play 
havoc with Shakspeare's lines prevented Fechter 
from "drawing the town." There is something of 
fashion in all this, of course; something to be at- 
tributed to the mere piquancy of the fact that Shak- 
speare is played by a French actor: but we must 
not exaggerate this influence. It may draw you to 
the theatre out of curiosity, but it will not stir your 
emotion when in the theatre; it will not bring 
down tumultuous applause at the great scenes. 
No sooner are you moved, than you forget the 
foreigner in the emotion. And the proof that it 
really is what is excellent, and not what is adven- 
titious, which creates the triumph of Fechter in 
Hamlet, is seen in the supreme ineffectiveness of 
his Othello. In "Ruy Bias" and the "Corsican 
Brothers" he was recognised as an excellent actor 
— not by any means a great actor, very far from 
that; but one who in the present condition of the 
stage was considered a decided acquisition. He 
then played Hamlet, and gave a new and charming 
representation to a part in which no actor has been 
known to fail; hence the uncritical concluded that 
he was a great actor. But when he came to a part 
like Othello, which calls upon the rarest capabilities 
of an actor, the public then remembered that he was a 
foreigner, and discovered that he was not a tragedian. 



I40 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

His Hamlet was one of the very best, and his 
Othello one of the very worst I have ever seen. 
On leaving the theatre after "Hamlet," I felt once 
more what a great play it was, with all its faults, 
and they are gross and numerous. On leaving the 
theatre after "Othello," I felt as if my old admira- 
tion for this supreme masterpiece of the art had 
been an exaggeration; all the faults of the play 
stood out so glaringly, all its beauties were so 
dimmed and distorted by the acting of everyone 
concerned. It was necessary to recur to Shak- 
speare's pages to recover the old feeling. 

Reflecting on the contrast offered by these two 
performances, it seemed to me that a good lesson 
on the philosophy of acting was to be read there. 
Two cardinal points were illustrated by it. First, 
the very general confusion which exists in men's 
minds respecting naturalism and idealism in art 
(which has been discussed in the last chapter); 
secondly, the essential limitation of an actor's 
sphere, as determined by his personality. Both in 
"Hamlet" and "Othello," Fechter attempts to be 
natural, and keeps as far away as possible from 
the conventional declamatory style, which is by 
many mistaken for idealism only because it is un- 
like reality. His physique enabled him to represent 
Hamlet, and his naturalism was artistic. His phy- 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. I4I 

sique wholly incapacitated him from representing 
Othello; and his naturalism, being mainly deter- 
mined by his personality, became utter feebleness. 
I do not mean that the whole cause of his failure 
rests with his physical incapacity, for, as will pre- 
sently be shown, his conception of the part is as 
questionable as his execution is feeble; but he 
might have had a wrong conception of the part, 
and yet have been ten times more effective, had 
nature endowed him with a physique of more 
weight and intensity. Twenty Othellos I have seen, 
with far less intelligence, but with more effective 
representative qualities, whose performances have 
stirred the very depths of the soul; whereas I can- 
not imagine any amount of intelligence enabling 
Fechter's personality to make the performance satis- 
factory. 

His Hamlet was "natural;" but this was not ow- 
ing to the simple fact of its being more conversa- 
tional and less stilted than usual. If Shakspeare's 
grandest language seemed to issue naturally from 
Fechter's lips, and did not strike you as out of 
place, which it so often does when mouthed on the 
stage, the reason was that he formed a tolerably 
true conception of Hamlet's nature, and could re- 
present that conception. It was his personality 
which enabled him to represent this conception. 



142 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

Many of the spectators had a conception as true, 
or truer, but they could not have represented it. 
This is self-evident. Naturalism truly means the 
reproduction of those details which characterise the 
nature of the thing represented. Realism means truth, 
not vulgarity. Truth of the higher as of the lower 
forms: truth of passion, and truth of manners. As 
Sanson finely says: — 

L'art c'est le naturel en doctrine erige. 

The nature of a Macbeth is not the nature of 
an Othello; the speech of Achilles is not the speech 
of Thersites. The truth of the "Madonna di San 
Sisto" is not the truth of Murillo's "Beggar Girl." 
But artists and critics often overlook this. Actors 
are especially prone to overlook it, and, in trying 
to be natural, they sink into the familiar ; though 
that is as unnatural as if they were to attempt to 
heighten the reality of the Apollo by flinging a 
paletot over his naked shoulders. It is this error 
into which Fechter falls in Othello; he vulgarises the 
part in the attempt to make it natural. Instead of 
the heroic, grave, impassioned Moor, he represents 
an excitable Creole of our own day. 

Intellectually and physically his Hamlet so satis- 
fies the audience, that they exclaim, "How natural!" 
Hamlet is fat, according to his mother's testimony; 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 43 

but he is also — at least in Ophelia's eyes — very- 
handsome — 

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, 
The glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
The observed of all observers. 

Fechter is lymphatic, delicate, handsome, and 
with his long flaxen curls, quivering sensitive nos- 
trils, fine eye, and sympathetic voice, perfectly re- 
presents the graceful prince. His aspect and bear- 
ing are such that the eye rests on him with delight. 
Our sympathies are completely secured. All those 
scenes which demand the qualities of an ac- 
complished comedian he plays to perfection. Sel- 
dom have the scenes with the players, with Polonius, 
with Horatio, with Rosenkranz and Guildenstern, 
or the quieter monologues, been better played; they 
are touched with so cunning a grace, and a manner 
so natural, that the effect is delightful. We not 
only feel in the presence of an individual, a character, 
but feel that the individual is consonant with our 
previous conception of Hamlet, and with the part 
assigned him in the play. The passages of emotion 
also are rendered with some sensibility. His de- 
lightful and sympathetic voice, and the unforced 
fervour of his expression, triumph over the foreigner's 
accent and the foreigner's mistakes in emphasis. 
This is really a considerable triumph; for although 



144 0N ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

Fechter pronounces English very well for a French- 
man, it is certain that his accent greatly interferes 
with the due effect of the speeches. But the foreign 
accent is as nothing compared with the frequent 
error of emphasis; and this surely he might over- 
come by diligent study, if he would consent to submit 
to the rigorous criticism of some English friend, 
who would correct him every time he errs. The 
sense is often perturbed, and sometimes violated, 
by this fault. Yet so great is the power of true 
emotion, that even this is forgotten directly he 
touches the feelings of the audience; and in his 
great speech, "O what a rogue and peasant slave 
am I!" no one hears the foreigner. 

Physically then we may say that his Hamlet is 
perfectly satisfactory; nor is it intellectually open 
to more criticism than must always arise in the case 
of a character which admits of so many readings. 
It is certainly a fine conception, consonant in 
general with what the text of Shakspeare indicates. 
It is the nearest approach I have seen to the reali- 
sation of Goethe's idea, expounded in the celebrated 
critique in Wilhelm Meister, that there is a burden 
laid on Hamlet too heavy for his soul to bear. The 
refinement, the feminine delicacy, the vacillation of 
Hamlet are admirably represented: and it is only 
in the more tragic scenes that we feel any short- 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 45 

coming. For these scenes he wants the tragedian's 
personality; and once for all let me say that by 
personality I do not simply mean the qualities of 
voice and person, but the qualities which give the 
force of animal passion demanded by tragedy, and 
which cannot be represented except by a certain 
animal poWer. 

There is one point, however, in his reading of 
the part which seems to me manifestly incorrect. 
The error, if error it be, is not peculiar to him, but 
has been shared by all the other Hamlets, probably 
because they did not know how to represent what 
Shakspeare has indicated rather than expressly set 
down. And as there is nothing in his physique 
which would prevent the proper representation of 
a different conception, I must assume that the error 
is one of interpretation. 

Much discussion has turned on the question of 
Hamlet's madness, whether it be real or assumed. 
It is not possible to settle this question. Arguments 
are strong on both sides. He may be really mad, 
and yet, with that terrible consciousness of the fact 
which often visits the insane, he may "put an antic 
disposition on," as a sort of relief to his feelings. 
Or he may merely assume madness as a means of 
accounting for any extravagance of demeanour into 
which the knowledge of his father's murder may 

Actors and Acting. 10 



I46 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

betray him. Shakspeare has committed the serious 
fault of not making this point clear; a modern 
writer who should commit such a fault would get 
no pardon. The actor is by no means called upon 
to settle such points. One thing, however, he is 
called upon to do, and that is, not to depart widely 
from the text, not to misrepresent what stands 
plainly written. Yet this the actors do in Hamlet. 
They may believe that Shakspeare never meant 
Hamlet to be really mad; but they cannot deny, 
and should not disregard, the plain language of the 
text — namely, that Shakspeare meant Hamlet to be 
in a state of intense cerebral excitement, seeming like 
madness. His sorrowing nature has been suddenly 
ploughed to its depths by a horror so great as to 
make him recoil every moment from the belief in 
its reality. The shock, if it has not destroyed his 
sanity, has certainly unsettled him. Nothing can be 
plainer than this. Every line speaks it. We see it 
in the rambling incoherence of his "wild and whirl- 
ing words" to his fellow- watchers and fellow- wit- 
nesses; but as this may be said to be assumed by him 
(although the motive for such an assumption is not 
clear, as he might have "put them off," and yet re- 
tained his coherence), I will appeal to the impres- 
sive fact of the irreverence with which in this scene 
he speaks of his father and to his father — language 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 47 

which Shakspeare surely never meant to be insigni- 
ficant, and which the actors always omit. Here is 
the scene after the exit of the ghost: — 

Enter Ho ratio and Marcellus. 

Mar. How is't, my noble lord? 

Hor. What news, my lord? 

Ham. O, wonderful! 

Hor. Good, my lord, tell it. 

Ham. No; 

You'll reveal it. 

Hor. Not I, my lord, by heaven. 

Mar. Nor I, my lord. 

Ham. How say you then ; would heart of man once think it? 
But you'll be secret, — 

Hor., Mar. Ay, by heaven, my lord. 

Ham. There's ne'er a villain, dwelling in all Denmark, 
But he's an arrant knave. 

Hor. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave, 
To tell us this. 

Ham. Why, right; you are in the right; 
And so, without more circumstance at all 
I hold it fit that we shake hands, and part; 
You, as your business and desire shall point you — ■ 
For every man has business and desire, 
Such as it is — and for mine own poor part, 
Look you, I'll go pray. 

Hor. These are but wild and whirling words, my lord. 

Ham. I'm sorry they offend you, heartily: 
Yes, 'faith, heartily. 

Hor. There's no offence, my lord. 

io* 



I48 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

Ham. Yes, by St. Patrick, but there is, my lord. 
And much offence too, touching this vision here. 
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you; 
For your desire to know what is between us, 
O'ermaster it as you may. And now, good friends, 
As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers, 
Give me one poor request. 

Hor. What is't, my lord? 

We will. 

Ham. Never make known what you have seen to-night. 

Hor., Mar. My lord, we will not. 

Ham. Nay, but swear't. 

Hor. In faith, 

My lord, not I. 

Mar. Nor I, my lord, in faith. 

Ham. Upon my sword. 

Mar. We have sworn, my lord, already. 

* Ham. Indeed, upon my sword, indeed. 

Ghost. [Beneath.] Swear. 

Ham. Ha, ha, boy! say' st thou so ? art thou there, truepenny? 
Come on — you hear this fellow in the cellerage — 
Consent to swear. 

Hor. Propose the oath, my lord. 

Ham. Never to speak of this that you have seen. 
Swear by my sword. 

Ghost. [Beneath.} Swear. 

Ham. Hie et ubique? then we'll shift our ground: — 
Come hither, gentlemen, 
And lay your hands again upon my sword : 
Never to speak of this that you have heard, 
Swear by my sword. 

Ghost. [Beneath.] Swear. 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 49 

Ham. Well said, old mole! canst work V the ground so fast? 
A worthy pioneer! — Once more remove, good friends. 

Now, why are these irreverent words omitted? 
Because the actors feel them to be irreverent, in- 
congruous? If spoken as Shakspeare meant them 
to be — as Hamlet in his excited and bewildered 
state must have uttered them — they would be 
eminently significant. It is evading the difficulty 
to omit them; and it is a departure from Shak- 
speare's obvious intention. Let but the actor enter 
into the excitement of the situation, and make visible 
the hurrying agitation which prompts these wild 
and whirling words, he will then find them expres- 
sive, and will throw the audience into correspond- 
ing emotion. 

But this scene- is only the beginning. From the 
moment of the Ghost's departure, Hamlet is a 
changed man. All the subsequent scenes should be 
impregnated with vague horror, and an agitation 
compounded of feverish desire for vengeance with 
the perplexities of thwarting doubt as to the reality 
of the story which has been heard. This alternation 
of wrath, and of doubt as to whether he has not 
been the victim of an hallucination, should be re- 
presented by the feverish agitation of an unquiet 
mind, visible even under all the outward calmness 
which it may be necessary to put on; whereas the 



I50 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

Hamlets I have seen are perfectly calm and self- 
possessed when they are not in a tempest of rage, 
or not feigning madness to deceive the King. 

It is part and parcel of this erroneous con- 
ception as to the state of Hamlet's mind (unless 
it be the mistake of substituting declamation for 
acting) which, as I believe, entirely misrepresents 
the purport of the famous soliloquy — "To be, 
or not to be." This is not a set speech to be 
declaimed to pit, boxes, and gallery, nor is it a 
moral thesis debated by Hamlet in intellectual free- 
dom; yet one or the other of these two mistakes is 
committed by all actors. Because it is a fine speech, 
pregnant with thought, it has been mistaken for an 
oratorical display; but I think Shakspeare's genius 
was too eminently dramatic to have committed 
so great an error as to substitute an oration for 
an exhibition of Hamlet's state of mind. The 
speech is passionate, not reflective; and it should 
be so spoken as if the thoughts were wrung from 
the agonies of a soul hankering after suicide as an 
escape from evils, yet terrified at the dim sense of 
greater evils after death. Not only would such a 
reading of the speech give it tenfold dramatic force, 
but it would be the fitting introduction to the wild- 
ness of the scene, which immediately succeeds, with 
Ophelia. This scene has also been much discussed. 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 151 

To render its strange violence intelligible, actors are 
wont to indicate, by their looking towards the door, 
that they suspect the King, or some one else, to be 
watching; and the wildness then takes its place 
among the assumed extravagances of Hamlet. 
Fechter also conceives it thus. I cannot find any 
warrant in Shakspeare for such a reading; and it is 
adopted solely to evade a difficulty which no longer 
exists when we consider Hamlet's state of feverish 
excitement. I believe, therefore, that Hamlet is 
not disguising his real feelings in this scene, but is 
terribly in earnest. If his wildness seem unnatural, 
I would ask the actors what they make of the |JLr 
greater extravagance with which he receives the con- 
firmation of his doubts by the effect of the play 
upon the King? Here, it is to be observed, there 
is no pretext for assuming an extravagant de- 
meanour; no one is watching now; he is alone with 
his dear friend and confidant, Horatio; and yet note 
his conduct. Seeing the King's guilt, he exclaims — 

His name's Gonzago; the story is extant, and writ in choice 
Italian : you shall see anon, how the murtherer gets the love of 
Gonzago 's wife. 

Oph. The king rises. 

Ham. What! frighted with false fire! 

Queen. How fares my lord? 

Pol. Give o'er the play. 



152 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

King. Give me some light: — away! 

All. Lights, lights, lights! 

[Exeunt all but Ham. and Hor. 

Ham. Why, let the strucken deer go weep, 

The hart ungalled play: 
For some must watch, while some must sleep; 

So runs the world away. — 
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers (if the rest of my 
fortunes turn Turk with me), with two Provencal roses on my 
razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir? 

Hor. Half a share. 

Ham. A whole one, ay. 
For thou dost know, O Damon dear, 

This realm dismantled was 
Of Jove himself; and now reigns here 
A very, very peacock. 

Hor. You might have rhymed. 

Ham. O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a 
thousand pound. Didst perceive? 

Hor. Very well, my lord. 

Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning, — 

Hor. I did very well note him. 

Ham. Ha, ha! — Come, some music; come, the recorders. — 
For if the king like not the comedy, 
Why, then, belike, he likes it not, perdy. 

Of course the actors omit the most significant 
of these passages, because they are afraid of being 
comic; but, if given with the requisite wildness, 
these passages would be terrible in their grotesque- 
ness. It is true that such wildness and grotesqueness 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 53 

would be out of keeping with any representation 
of Hamlet which made him calm, and only assum- 
ing madness at intervals. But is such a conception 
Shakspearian? 

Fechter is not specially to be blamed for not 
having made Hamlet's state of excitement visible 
throughout; but although his personality debars him 
from due representation of the more tragic scenes, 
it would not debar him from representing Hamlet's 
agitation if he conceived it truly. On the whole, 
however, I repeat that his performance was charm- 
ing, because natural. 

In direct contrast was the performance of Othello. 
It had no one good quality. False in conception, 
it was feeble in execution. He attempted to make 
the character natural, and made it vulgar. His 
idea of the character and of the play from first to 
last showed strange misconception. He departed 
openly from the plain language of the text, on 
points where there is no justification for the depar- 
ture. Thus, Othello tells us he is "declined into 
the vale of years;" Fechter makes him young. 
Othello is black — the very tragedy lies there; the 
whole force of the contrast, the whole pathos and 
extenuation of his doubts of Desdemona, depend 
on this blackness. Fechter makes him a half-caste, 
whose mere appearance would excite no repulsion 



154 0N ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

in any woman out of America. Othello is grave, 
dignified, a man accustomed to the weight of great 
responsibilities, and to the command of armies; 
Fechter is unpleasantly familiar, paws Iago about 
like an overdemonstrative schoolboy; shakes hands 
on the slightest provocation; and bears himself like 
the hero of French drame, but not like a hero of 
tragedy. 

In his edition of the play, Fechter urges two 
considerations. First, that Shakspeare is to be acted, 
not recited; secondly, that tradition ought to be set 
aside. In both points he will find most people 
agreeing with him, but few willing to see any novelty in 
these positions. We, who remember Kean in Othello, 
may surely be excused if we believe that we have 
seen Othello acted, and so acted as there is little 
chance of our seeing it acted again; the con- 
sequence of which is, that we look upon Fechter's 
representation as acting, indeed, but as very bad 
acting. 

Then as to tradition, we are willing enough, 
nowadays, to give up all conventional business 
which does not justify itself; but we are very far 
from supposing that, because Fechter's arrangement 
of the business is new, therefore it is justifiable 
or acceptable. In some respects it is good; in the 
arrangement of the scene in the senate there was a 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. I 55 

very striking improvement, which gave a really 
natural air to the scene; and some other scenical 
details show a decided faculty for stage arrange- 
ment. But in many others there is a blundering 
perversity and disregard of the obvious meaning of 
the text, which is only to be accounted for on the 
supposition that Fechter wished to make "Othello" 
a drame such as would suit the Porte St. Martin. 

The principle has doubtless been the same as 
that which, in a less degree, and under happier in- 
spiration, made the success of "Hamlet": the desire 
to be natural — the aim at realism. But here the 
confusion between realism and vulgarism works 
like poison. It is not consistent with the nature 
of tragedy to obtrude the details of daily life. All 
that lounging on tables and lolling against chairs, 
which help to convey a sense of reality in the 
drame, are as unnatural in tragedy, as it would be 
to place the " Sleeping Fawn " of Phidias on a com- 
fortable feather-bed. When Fechter takes out his 
door-key to let himself into his house, and, on 
coming back, relocks the door and pockets the key, 
the intention is doubtless to give an air of reality; 
the effect is to make us forget the "noble Moor," 
and to think of a sepoy. When he appears leaning 
on the shoulder of Iago (the great general and his 
ensign!), when he salutes the personages with grace- 



156 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

ful prettinesses, when he kisses the hand of Des- 
demona, and when he employs that favourite gesti- 
culation which reminds us but too forcibly of a 
gamin threatening to throw a stone, he is certainly 
natural, — but according to whose nature? 

In general, it may be said that, accomplished an 
actor as Fechter certainly is, he has allowed the 
acting-manager to gain the upper hand. In his 
desire to be effective by means of small details of 
"business," he has entirely frittered away the great 
effects of the drama. He has yet to learn the virtue 
of simplicity; he has yet to learn that tragedy acts 
through the emotions, and not through the eye; 
whatever distracts attention from the passion of the 
scene is fatal. 

Thus, while his Hamlet satisfied the audience 
by being at once naturally conceived and effectively 
represented, his Othello left the audience perfectly 
cold, or interested only as by a curiosity, because it 
was unnaturally conceived and feebly executed. 
Had the execution been fine, the false conception 
would have been forgotten, or pardoned. Many a 
ranting Othello contrives to interest and to move 
his audience without any conception at all, simply 
uttering the language of Shakspeare with force, and 
following the traditional business. Shakspeare, if 
the personality of the actor be not too violently in 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 57 

contradiction with the text, carries effect in every 
scene; we listen and are moved. But unhappily 
Fechter's personality is one wholly unsuited to such 
a character as Othello. This is evident from the 
first. My doubts began with the first act. In it 
Othello has little to do, but much to be. In this 
masterpiece of dramatic exposition the groundwork 
of the play is grandly laid out. It presents the 
hero as a great and trusted warrior, a simple, calm, 
open, reliant nature — a man admirable not only in 
his deeds, but in his lofty and heroic soul. Unless 
you get a sense of this, you are as puzzled at Des- 
demona's choice as Brabantio is. But it is inevitable 
that with such a personality as Fechter's you should 
feel none of this. He represents an affectionate 
but feeble young gentleman, whose position in the 
army must surely have been gained by "purchase." 
This is not the actor's fault. Even had he been 
calm and simple in his gestures, he could not have 
been dignified and impressive; nature had emphati- 
cally said No to such an effect. Voice and bearing 
would have failed him had his conception been 
just. An unintelligent actor who is at the same 
time a superb animal, will be impressive in this act 
if he is simply quiet. If, for example, you compare 
Gustavus Brooke with Fechter, you will see this at 
once. Still more strikingly is this seen on a com- 



I58 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

parison of Edmund Kean with Fechter. Kean was 
undersized — very much smaller than Fechter; and 
yet what a grand bearing he had! what an impres- 
sive personality! 

In the second act my doubts increased. The 
entrance of Othello, with the flame of victory in his 
eye, eager to clasp his young wife to his breast, 
and share with her his triumph and his joy, was an 
opportunity for being natural which Fechter wholly 
missed. Never was there a tamer meeting. Kean's 
tones, "O my fair warrior!" are still ringing in my 
ears, though a quarter of a century must have elapsed 
since I heard them; but I cannot recall Fechter's 
tones, heard only the other night. I only recall a 
vision of him holding his wife at most "proper" 
distance, kissing her hand, his tone free from all 
tremulous emotion, though he has to say — 

O my soul's joy! 
If after every tempest come such calms, 
May the winds blow till they have wakened death! 

If it were now to die 
'Twere now to be most happy ; for I fear 
My soul hath her content so absolute, 
That not another comfort like to this 
Succeeds in unknown fate. 

And from Desdemona he turns to the gentlemen of 
Cyprus, as affable and calm as if he had but just 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 59 

come home from a morning stroll. There was none 
of the emotion of the situation. 

In the scene of the brawl we have the first 
indication of Othello's tremendous vehemence when 
roused. Fechter was loud, but he was not fierce.* 
It is characteristic of his whole performance in the 
passionate parts, that he goes up the stage and bids 
them 

Silence that dreadful bell, it frights the isle 
From her propriety, 

with an accent of impatient irritability, as if he 
were angry at the bell's preventing his hearing what 
was to be said. 

But little as the performance in these two acts 
came up to even my moderate expectations of 
Fechter's power to represent Othello, it was not 
until the third act that I finally pronounced judg- 
ment. That act is the test of a tragedian. If he 
cannot produce a great effect there, he need never 
seek elsewhere for an opportunity; the greatest will 
find in it occasion for all his powers, and the worst 
will hardly miss some effects. To think of what 
Edmund Kean was in this act! When shall we 
see again that lion-like power and lion-like grace — 

* Fuyant le naturel sans trouver la grandeur. 

Sanson: VArt Thi&tral 



l60 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

that dreadful culmination of wrath, alternating with 
bursts of agony — that Oriental and yet most natural 
gesture, which even in its naturalness preserved a 
grand ideal propriety (for example, when his joined 
uplifted hands, the palms being upwards, were 
lowered upon his head, as if to keep his poor brain 
from bursting) — that exquisitely touching pathos, 
and that lurid flame of vengeance flashing from 
his eye? When shall we hear again those tones: 
"Not a jot, not a jot" — "Blood, Iago, blood," — 
"But oh, the pity of it, Iago! the pity of it"? Cer- 
tainly no one ever expected that Fechter, with his 
sympathetic temperament and soft voice, could ap- 
proach the tragic grandeur of the elder Kean; but 
neither could anyone who had heard that his 
Othello was "the talk of the town" have supposed 
that this third act would fail even to move the ap- 
plause of an audience very ready to applaud. 

In saying that he failed to arouse the audience, 
I am saying simply what I observed and felt. The 
causes of that failure may be open to discussion: 
the fact is irresistible; and the causes seem to me 
clear enough. He is incapable of representing the 
torrent of passion, which by him is broken up into 
numerous petty waves: we see the glancing foam, 
breaking along many lines, instead of one omni- 
potent and roaring surf. He is loud — and weak; 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. l6l 

irritable, not passionate. The wrath escapes in 
spirts, instead of flowing in one mighty tide; and 
after each spirt he is calm, not shaken by the 
tremulous subsidence of passion. This lapse from 
the wildness of rage to the calmness of logical 
consideration or argumentative expostulation, this 
absence of gradation and after-glow of passion, I 
have already indicated as the error committed by 
Charles Kean and other tragedians; it arises from 
their not identifying themselves with the feeling of 
the part. 

To give what Bacon calls an "ostensive instance," 
let me refer to the opening of the fourth act. 
Othello, worked upon by Iago's horrible suggestions, 
is so shaken by wrath and grief that he falls down 
in a fit. Fechter, probably because he felt that he 
could not render the passion so as to make this 
natural, omits the scene, and opens the act with 
Iago soliloquising over his senseless victim. In 
spite of the awkward attitude in which Fechter is 
lying, those of the audience who are not familiar 
with the play imagine that Othello is sleeping; and 
when he rises from the couch and begins to speak, 
he is indeed as calm and unaffected by the fit as if 
he had only been asleep. 

Another source of weakness is the redundancy 
of gesture and the desire to make a number of 

Actors and Acting. 1 1 



1 62 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

points, instead of concentrating attention on the 
general effect. Thus, when he is roused to catch 
Iago by the throat, instead of an accumulation of 
threats, he jerks out a succession of various threats, 
looking' away from Iago every now and then, and 
varying his gestures, so as to destroy all sense of 
climax. 

If it is a fact — and I appeal to the audience as 
witness — that we do not feel deep pity for the 
noble Moor and do not sympathise with his ir- 
rational yet natural wrath, when Fechter plays the 
part, surely the reason can only be that the part is 
not represented naturally? Now much of this, I 
repeat, is the necessary consequence of his per- 
sonality. He could not represent it naturally even 
if he conceived the part truly; and, as already in- 
timated, the conception is not true. Certain points 
of the conception have been touched on; I will 
now specify two others. The unideal (consequently 
unnatural) representation may be illustrated by the 
manner in which he proposes, instead of order- 
ing Cassio's death. Shakspeare's language is per- 
emptory: — 

Within these three days let me hear thee say 
That Cassio's not alive. 

The idea in his mind is simply that Cassio has 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 63 

deserved death. He does not trouble himself about 
the means; and surely never thinks of murder. A 
general who orders a soldier to be hung, or shot, 
without trial, is not a murderer. Yet Fechter pro- 
poses a murder, and proposes it with a sort of 
subdued hesitation, as if conscious of the crime. 
He thus completely bears out Rymer's sarcasm: 
"He sets Iago to the fighting part, to kill Cassio; 
and chuses himself to murder the silly woman, his 
wife, that was like to make no resistance."* 

The second illustration which may be noticed, 
is the perverse departure from the obvious meaning 
of the text, which in his desire for originality and 
naturalness in the business, makes him destroy the 
whole art of Shakspeare's preparation, and makes 
the jealousy of Othello seem preposterous. One 
defect in the play which has been felt by all critics 
is the rapidity with which Othello is made to be- 
lieve in his wife's guilt. Now, allowing for the 
rapidity which the compression necessary to dramatic 
art renders almost inevitable, I think Shakspeare has 
so exhibited the growth of the jealousy, that it is 
only on reflection that the audience becomes aware 

* Rymer: A Short View of Tragedy, its original excellency 
and corruption. 1693. P- 93- This most amusing attack on 
Othello reads very often like sound criticism, when one has just 
witnessed the performances at the Princess's Theatre. 

II* 



I64 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OE ACTING. 

of the slight grounds on which the Moor is con- 
vinced. It is the actor's part to make the audience 
feel this growth — to make them go along with 
Othello, sympathising with him, and believing with 
him. Fechter deliberately disregards all the plain 
meaning of the text, and makes the conviction 
sudden and preposterous. It is one of his new 
arrangements that Othello, when the tempter begins 
his diabolical insinuation, shall be seated at a table 
reading and signing papers. When first I heard of 
this bit of "business," it struck me as admirable; 
and indeed I think so still; although the manner in 
which Fechter executes it is one of those lamentable 
examples in which the dramatic art is subordinated 
to serve theatrical effect.* That Othello should be 
seated over his papers, and should reply to Iago's 
questions while continuing his examination, and 
affixing his signature, is natural) but it is not 
natural — that is, not true to the nature of Othello 
and the situation — for him to be dead to the dread- 
ful import of Iago's artful suggestions. Let us hear 
Shakspeare. 

Othello and Iago enter as Cassio takes leave of 1 

* Having now seen Salvini in Othello I conclude that this 
"business" was imitated from him- but Fechter failed to imitate 
the expression of emotion which renders such business significant. , 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 165 

Desdemona; whereupon Iago says, meaning to be 
heard, "Ha! I like not that!" 

Othello. What dost thou say? 

Iago. Nothing, my lord: or if — I know not what. 

Othello. Was not that Cassio parted from my wife? 

Iago. Cassio, my lord? no sure, I cannot think it, 
That he would steal away, so guilty-like, 
Seeing your coming. 

Othello. I do believe 'twas he. 

Desdem. How now, my lord. 
I have been talking with a suitor here, 
A man that languishes in your displeasure. 

Othello. Who is't you mean? 

Des. Why your lieutenant Cassio; good my lord, 
If I have any grace or power to move you, 
His present reconciliation take. 
I prithee call him back. 

Othello. Went he hence now? 

Des. Ay sooth; so humbled 
That he hath left part of his grief with me 
To suffer with him. Good love, call him back. 

Othello. Not now, sweet Desdemon; some other time. 

Des. But shall't be shortly? 

Othello. The sooner, sweet, for you. 

Des. Shall't be to-night at supper? 

Othello. No, not to night. 

Des. To-morrow, dinner, then? 

Othello. I shall not dine at home. 

These short evasive sentences are subtly expressive 



1 66 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

of the state of Othello's mind; but Fechter mis- 
represents them by making Othello free from all 
misgiving. He "toys with her curls," and treats 
her as a father might treat a child who was asking 
some favour which could not be granted yet which 
called for no explicit refusal. If the scene stood 
alone, I should read it differently; but standing as 
it does between the two attempts of Iago to fill 
Othello's mind with suspicion, the meaning is plain 
enough. He has been made uneasy by Iago's re- 
marks; very naturally, his bearing towards his wife 
reveals that uneasiness. A vague feeling, which he 
dares not shape into a suspicion, disturbs him. She 
conquers him at last by her winning ways; and he 
vows that he will deny her nothing. 

If this be the state of mind in which the great 
scene begins, it is obviously a serious mistake in 
Fechter to sit down to his papers, perfectly calm, 
free from all idea whatever of whatlago has suggested; 
and answering Iago's insidious questions as if he 
did not divine their import. So clearly does Othello 
divine their import, that it is he, and not Iago, who 
expresses in words their meaning. It is one of the 
artifices of Iago to make his victim draw every 
conclusion from premises which are put before him, 
so that, in the event of detection, he can say, "I 
said nothing, I made no accusation." All he does 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. I 67 

is to lead the thoughts of Othello to the conclusion 
desired. The scene thus begins: — 

Iago. My noble lord — 
Othello. What dost thou say, Iago? 
Iago. Did Michael Cassio, when you wooed my lady, 
Know of your love? 

Now Iago perfectly well knew this, for he had heard 
Desdemona say so just the minute before. 

Othello. He did from first to last : Why dost thou ask ? 
Iago. But for the satisfaction of my thought; 
No further harm. 

Properly, Iago's answer should end at the word 
thought; that is the answer to the question; but he 
artfully adds the suggestion of harm, which falls 
like a spark on the inflammable mind of his victim, 
who eagerly asks, "Why of thy thought, Iago?" 

Iago. I did not think he had been acquainted with her. 
Othello. Oh yes; and went between us very oft. 
Iago. Indeed? 

Othello. Indeed? Ay, Indeed: Discern'st thou aught in that ? 
Is he not honest? 

Iago. Honest, my lord? 
Othello. Honest? ay, honest? 
Iago. My lord, for aught I know. 
Othello. What dost thou think? 
Iago. Think, my lord ? 

It is difficult to comprehend how anyone should 
fail to interpret this dialogue, every word of which 



1 68 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

is an increase of the slowly growing suspicion. If 
the scene ended here, there might indeed be a de- 
fence set up for Fechter's notion that Othello should 
reply to the insinuation in a careless manner, "play- 
ing with his pen as he speaks;" but no defence is 
permissible for one moment when we know how 
the scene proceeds. 

Othello. Think, my lord? By heaven he echoes me! 
As if there were some monster in his thought 
Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something; 
I heard thee say but now, thou lik'dst not that 
When Cassio left my wife: what didst not like? 
And when I told thee he was of my counsel 
In my whole course of wooing, thou cry'dst, Indeed? 
And didst contract and purse thy brow together, 
As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain 
Some horrible conceit. If thou dost love me 
Show me thy thought. 

Fechter would perhaps urge that this language is 
not to be understood seriously, but as the banter 
of Othello at seeing Iago purse his brow and look 
mysterious about trifles. It is in this sense that he 
plays the part. But how widely he errs, and how 
seriously Othello is disturbed, may be read in his 
next speech: — 

I know thou'rt full of love and honesty, 

And weigh'st thy words before thou giv'st them breath, 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 69 

Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more; 
For such things in a. false disloyal knave 
Are tricks of custom; but in a man that's just 
They're close denotements, working from the heart 
That passion cannot rule. 

Is this banter? and when he bids Iago 

Speak to me, as to thy thinkings, 
As thou dost ruminate; and give thy worst of thoughts 
The worst of words, 

it is impossible to suppose that his mind has not 
already shaped the worst suspicions which he wishes 
Iago to confirm. 

Here, I affirm, the plain sense of Shakspeare is 
not only too clearly indicated to admit of the most 
ingenious reading in another sense, but any other 
reading would destroy the dramatic art with which 
the scene is conducted, because it would destroy 
those indications of the growth of the feeling, which 
feeling, being really founded on Iago's suggestions 
and the smallest possible external evidence, becomes 
preposterous when the evidence alone is appealed 
to. Now, Fechter so little understands this, as not 
only to miss such broadly marked indications, but 
to commit the absurdity of making Othello suddenly 
convinced, and by what? by the argument of Iago, 
that Desdemona deceived her father, and may there- 
fore deceive her husband! But that argument (set- 



170 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

ting aside the notion of a character like Othello 
being moved by merely intellectual considerations) 
had already been forcibly presented to his mind by 
her father: — 

Look to her, Moor, have a quick eye to see : 
She did deceive her father, and may thee. 

Whereupon he replies, "My life upon her faith." 
And so he would reply to Iago, had not his mind 
already been filled with distrust. Fechter makes 
him carelesss, confident, unsuspicious, until Iago 
suggests her deception of her father, and then at 
once credulous and overcome. This may be the art 
of the Porte St. Martin, or the Varietes; it is not 
the art of Shakspeare. 

Whatever may be our estimate of Fechter, his 
success with Hamlet proves that there is a vast and 
hungry public ready to welcome and reward any 
good dramatist or fine actor; but in default of these 
willing to be amused by spectacles and sensation 
pieces. Whether dramatist or actor will arise, and 
by his influence create a stage once more, is a wider 
question. I shall not enter upon it here, nor shall 
I touch on the causes of the present condition. My 
purpose is rather to consider the suggestion which 
has been made of the probable influence of foreign 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. I 7 I 

actors upon our stage. Some have thought that 
here is an opportunity for our young actors to sur- 
prise many of the secrets of the art, and to unlearn 
some of their own conventional errors. In one 
sense this is plausible; for a young student, if at 
once gifted and modest, may undeniably learn much 
in the study of artists belonging to a wholly dif- 
ferent school; especially if he can discriminate what 
is conventional in them, though unlike his own con- 
ventionalism. Nevertheless, on the whole, I think 
the gain likely to be small; just as the gain to our 
painters is small if they are early sent to Rome to 
study the great masters. They become imitators 
and imitate what is conventional, or individual 
mannerism. 

There is a mistake generally made respecting 
foreign actors, one, indeed, which is almost in- 
evitable, unless the critic has long been familiar 
with the foreign stage. I allude to the mistake of 
supposing an actor to be fresh and original, because 
he has not the conventionalisms with which we are 
familiar on our own stage. He has the conven- 
tionalisms of his own. The traditions of the French, 
German, and Italian theatres thus appear to our 
unfamiliar eyes as the inventions of the actors; just 
as in our youth we thought it deliciously comic 
when the rattling young gentleman placed his cane 



172 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

on the gouty old gentleman's toe — a bit of "busi- 
ness" which now affects us with the hilarity of an 
old Joe Miller. When Emil Devrient played Hamlet 
with the German company, both he and the actor 
who took the part of Polonius were thought by our 
old playgoers to be remarkable artists, simply be- 
cause the "business" was so very novel. But any 
one familiar with the German stage could have as- 
sured them that this business was almost all tradi- 
tional, and could have pointed out the extremely 
mechanical style in which the parts were performed 
by these actors. It is true that English actors might 
have gained some hints from studying these repre- 
sentations ; but only by discriminating those elements 
which fitly belong to the characters from those which 
were German conventionalisms. 

Thus, I do not know that under any circum- 
stances the presence of foreign actors on our stage 
could have more than the negative influence of 
teaching our actors to avoid some of their con- 
ventionalisms. It could only have a direct and 
positive influence in the case of real genius, which 
would display the futility of conventionalisms, and 
teach the actor to rely on sincerity of expression. 
When great effects are seen to be produced by the 
natural language of emotion, the intelligent actor 
loses his confidence in rant. 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 173 

Passing from these general considerations to the 
special case of the foreign actors now on our stage, 
let us ask what probability is there of any good 
influence being derived from such models? Ristori 
is universally spoken of as the rival of Rachel: 
many think her superior. The difference between 
them seems to me the difference between talent and 
genius, between a woman admirable in her art, and 
a woman creative in her art. Ristori has complete 
mastery of the mechanism of the stage, but is with- 
out the inspiration necessary for great acting. A 
more beautiful and graceful woman, with a more 
musical voice, has seldom appeared; but it is with 
her acting as with her voice — the line which separates 
charm from profound emotion is never passed. 
When I saw her in Lady Macbeth my disappoint- 
ment was extreme: none of the qualities of a great 
actress were manifested. But she completely con- 
quered me in Medea; and the conquest was all the 
more noticeable, because it triumphed over the im- 
pressions previously received from Robson's bur- 
lesque imitation. The exquisite grace of her attitudes, 
the mournful beauty of her voice, the flash of her 
wrath, and the air of supreme distinction which seems 
native to her, gave a charm to this performance 
which is unforgettable. No wonder that people 
were enthusiastic about an actress who could give 



174 0N ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

them such refined pleasure; and no wonder that 
few paused to be very critical of her deficiencies. 
I missed, it is true, the something which Rachel had : 
the sudden splendour of creative power, the burning- 
point of passion; yet I confess that I then thought 
it possible she might prove a more consummate 
comedian than Rachel, though so manifestly inferior 
to her in great moments. That supposition was a 
profound mistake. I discovered it on seeing Adrienne 
Lecouvreur the other night. The disappointment, 
not to say weariness, felt at this performance, caused 
me to recur to the disappointment felt at her Lady 
Macbeth: these performances marked a limit, and 
defined the range of her artistic power. In Adrienne 
there was still the lovely woman, with the air of 
i distinction and the musical voice; but except in the 
recitation of the pretty fable of the two pigeons, 
the passage from Phedre, and the one look of dawn- 
ing belief brightening into rapture, as she is re- 
assured by her lover's explanation, there was no- 
thing in the performance which was not thoroughly 
conventional. Nor was this the worst fault. In 
the lighter scenes she was not only conventional, 
but committed that common mistake of conven- 
tional actors, an incongruous mixture of effects. 

Let me explain more particularly what is meant 
by the term conventional acting. When an actor 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. I 75 

feels a vivid sympathy with the passion, or humour, 
he is representing, he personates, i.e. speaks through 
the persona or character; and for the moment is 
what he represents. He can do this only in pro- 
portion to the vividness of his sympathy, and the 
plasticity of his organisation, which enables him to 
give expression to what he feels; there are certain 
physical limitations in every organisation which ab- 
solutely prevent adequate expression of what is in 
the mind; and thus it is that a dramatist can rarely 
personate one of his own conceptions. But within 
the limits which are assigned by nature to every 
artist, the success of the personation will depend 
upon the vividness of the actor's sympathy, and his 
honest reliance on the truth of his own individual 
expression, in preference to the conventional ex- 
pressions which may be accepted on the stage. 
This is the great actor, the creative artist. The 
conventional artist is one who either, because he 
does not feel the vivid sympathy, or cannot express 
what he feels, or has not sufficient energy of self- 
reliance to trust frankly to his own expressions, 
cannot be the part, but tries to act it, and is thus 
necessarily driven to adopt those conventional 
means of expression with which the traditions of 
the stage abound. Instead of allowing a strong 
feeling to express itself through its natural signs. 



1/6 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

he seizes upon the conventional signs, either because 
in truth there is no strong feeling moving him, or 
because he is not artist enough to give it genuine 
expression; his lips will curl, his brow wrinkle, his 
eyes be thrown up, his forehead be slapped, or he 
will grimace, rant, and "take the stage," in the 
style which has become traditional, but which was 
perhaps never seen off the stage; and thus he runs 
through the gamut of sounds and signs which bear 
as remote an affinity to any real expressions, as the 
pantomimic conventions of ballet-dancers. 

A similar contrast is observed in literature. As 
there are occasionally actors who personate — who 
give expression to "a genuine feeling — so there are 
occasionally writers, not merely litterateurs, who 
give expression in words to the actual thought 
which is in their minds. The writer uses words 
which are conventional signs, but he uses them with 
a sincerity and directness of individual expression 
which makes them the genuine utterance of his 
thoughts and feelings; the litterateur uses con- 
ventional phrases, but he uses them without the 
guiding instinct of individual expression; he tries 
to express what others have expressed, not what is 
really in his own mind. With a certain skill, the 
litterateur becomes an acceptable workman; but we 
never speak of him as a writer, never estimate him 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. I 77 

as a man of genius, unless he can make his own 
soul speak to us. The conventional language of 
poetry and passion, of dignity and drollery, may be 
more or less skilfully used by a writer of talent; 
but he never delights us with those words which 
come from the heart, never thrills us with the simple 
touches of nature — those nothings which are im- 
mense, and which make writing memorable. 

In saying that Ristori is a conventional actress, 
therefore, I mean that with great art she employs 
the traditional conventions of the stage, and repro- 
duces the effects which others have produced, but 
does not deeply move us, because not herself deeply 
moved. Take away her beauty, grace, and voice, 
and she is an ordinary comedian; whereas Schroder, 
Devrient, and Pasta were assuredly neither handsome 
nor imposing in physique; and Rachel made a 
common Jewish physiognomy lovely by mere force 
of expression. In Medea Ristori was conventional 
and admirable. In Adrienne she was conventional 
and inartistic; for while the character was not per- 
sonated, but simulated, it was simulated by con- 
ventional signs drawn from a totally wrong source. 
The comedy was the comedy of a soubrette; the 
playfulness had the minauderie of a frivolous woman, 
not the charm of a smile upon a serious face. It 
is a common mistake of conventional serious actors 

Actors and Acting. 12 



178 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING". 

in comic scenes to imitate the "business" and manner 
of comic actors. The actor of serious style wishing 
to be funny thinks he must approach the low- 
comedy style, and is often vulgar, always ineffective, 
by his very efforts at being effective. Ristori might 
have learned from Rachel that the lighter scenes of 
Adrienne could be charming without once touching 
on the "business" of the soubrette; and play-goers 
who remember Helen Faucit, especially in parts 
like Rosalind (a glimpse of which was had the other 
night), will remember how perfectly that fine actress 
can represent the joyous playfulness of young animal 
spirits, without once ceasing to be poetical. The 
gaiety of a serious nature even in its excitement 
must always preserve a certain tone which distin- 
guishes it from the mirth of unimpassioned natures : 
a certain ground- swell of emotion should be felt 
beneath. The manner may be light, but it should 
spring from a deep nature: it is the difference 
between the comedy of Shakspeare or Moliere, even 
when most extravagant, and the comedy of Congreve 
or Scribe; there may be a heartier laugh, but it has 
a more serious background. At any rate, the unity 
of effect which is demanded in all representation 
is greatly damaged when, as in the case of Adrienne 
represented by Ristori, instead of the playfulness 
of an impassioned woman, we have a patchwork of 



Foreign actors on our stage. 179 

effects — a bit of a soubrette tacked on to a bit of 
the coquette, that again to a bit of the ingenue, and 
that to a tragic part. Ristori was not one woman 
in several moods, but several actresses playing 
several scenes. 

Nevertheless, while insisting on her deficiencies, 
I must repeat the expression of my admiration for 
Ristori as a distinguished actress; if not of the 
highest rank, she is very high, in virtue of her per- 
sonal gifts, and the trained skill with which these 
gifts are applied. And her failures are instructive. 
The failures of distinguished artists are always 
fruitful in suggestion. The question naturally 
arises, why is her success so great in certain plays, 
and so dubious in Shakspeare or the drama? It is 
of little use to say that Lady Macbeth and Adrienne 
are beyond her means; that is only re- stating the 
fact; can we not trace both success and failure to 
one source? In what is called the ideal drama, 
constructed after the Greek type, she would be 
generally successful, because the simplicity of its 
motives and the artificiality of its structure, remov- 
ing it from beyond the region of ordinary ex- 
perience, demand from the actor a corresponding 
artificiality. Attitudes, draperies, gestures, tones, 
and elocution which would be incongruous in a 
drama approaching more nearly to the evolutions 

12* 



iSo ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

of ordinary experience, become, in the ideal drama, 
artistic modes of expression; and it is in these that 
Ristori displays a fine selective instinct, and a rare 
felicity of organisation. All is artificial, but then 
all is congruous. A noble unity of impression is 
produced. We do not demand individual truth of 
character and passion; the ideal sketch suffices. It 
is only on a smaller scale what was seen upon the 
Greek stage, where the immensity of the theatre 
absolutely interdicted all individualising; spectators 
were content with masks and attitudes where in the 
modern drama we demand the fluctuating physi- 
ognomy of passion, and the minute individualities 
of character. 

When, however, the conventional actress descends 
from the ideal to the real drama, from the simple 
and general to the complex and individual in 
personation, she is at a .disadvantage. Rachel could 
make this descent, as all will remember who saw 
her x\drienne or Lady Tartufe; but then Rachel 
personated, she spoke through the character, she 
suffered her inward feelings to express themselves 
in outward signs; she had not to cast about her 
for the outward signs which conventionally ex- 
pressed such feelings. She had but a limited range, 
there were few parts she could play; but those few 
she personated, those she created. I do not think 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. I Si 

that Ristori could personate; she would always seek 
the conventional signs of expression, although 
frequently using them with consummate skill. 

If what I have said is true, it is clear that the 
gain to our stage from the study of such an actress 
would be small. Her beauty, her distinction, her 
grace, her voice, are not imitable; and nowhere 
does she teach the actor to rely on natural ex- 
pression. Still more is this the case with Fechter, 
an artist many degrees inferior to Ristori, yet an 
accomplished actor in his own sphere. With regard 
to Mdlle. Stella Colas, bad as our actors are, they 
have nothing to learn from her. As I said, she is 
very pretty, and has a powerful voice: but her per- 
formance of Juliet, which seems to delight so many 
honest spectators, is wholly without distinction. 
During the first two acts one recognises a well- 
taught pupil, whose byplay is very good, and whose 
youth and beauty make a pleasant scenic illusion. 
The balcony scene, though not at all representing 
Shakspeare's Juliet, was a pretty and very effective 
bit of acting. It was mechanical, but skilful too. 
It assured me that she was not an actress of any 
spontaneity; but it led me to hope more from the 
subsequent scenes than she did effect. Indeed, as 
the play advanced, my opinion of her powers sank. 
No sooner were the stronger emotions to be ex- 



1 82 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

pressed than the mediocrity and conventionalism 
became more salient. She has great physical 
energy, and the groundlings are delighted with her 
displays of it; nor does the monotony of her vehe- 
mence seem to weary them, more than the inartistic 
redundance of effort in the quieter scenes. She has 
not yet learned to speak a speech, but tries to make 
every line emphatic. Partly this may be due to the 
difficulty of pronouncing a foreign language; but 
not wholly so, as is shown in the redundancy of 
gesture and "business." Her elocution would be 
very defective in her own language; and its least 
defect, to my apprehension, is the imperfection of 
her English accent. With all her vehemence, she 
is destitute of passion; she "splits the ears of the 
groundlings," but moves no human soul. Her 
looks,' tones, gestures — all have the well-known 
melodramatic unreality; and if a British public 
riotously applauds her energetic passages, it is but 
justice to that public to say that it also applauds 
the ranting Romeo, and other amazing representa- 
tives of the play. 

With regard to the young actress herself about 
whom I am forced to speak thus harshly, I see so 
much material for future distinction, that I almost 
regret this early success. So much personal charm, 
so much energy, and so much ambition, may even 



FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. 1 83 

yet carry her to the front ranks; but at present, I 
believe that every French critic would be astonished 
at the facility with which English audiences have 
accepted his young countrywoman; and he would 
probably make some derogatory remarks upon pur 
insular taste. I do not for one moment deny her 
success — I only point to its moral. The stage upon' 
which such acting could be regarded as excellent 
is in a pitiable condition. It is good mob acting: 
charming the eye and stunning the ear. The 
audiences have for so long been unused to see any 
truer or more refined representation, that they may 
be excused if, misled by the public press, and the 
prestige attached to the young Frenchwoman because 
she is French, they go prepared to see something 
wonderful, and believe that a Juliet so unlike any- 
thing they have ever seen is really a remarkable 
representation. The applauders find their more 
intelligent friends unwilling to admit that Mdlle. 
Colas is at present anything more than a very pretty 
woman, and peevishly exclaim, "Hang it! you are 
so difficult to please." But I believe that were the 
stage in a more vigorous condition, there would be 
no difference of opinion on this point. If Mdlle. 
Colas finds easy admirers, it is because, as the 
Spaniards say, in the kingdom of the blind the one- 
eyed is king. 



184 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 



CHAPTER XII. 

The Drama in Paris. 1865. 

As the critic's office is somewhat of a sinecure 
just now in London, the suggestion of a visit to 
the Paris theatres naturally arises in the mind of 
one desirous of writing something about the art of 
acting. The present condition of the English drama 
is deplored by all lovers of the art. It is the more 
irritating, because never were theatres so flourish- 
ing. A variety of concurrent causes, which need 
not here be enumerated, has reduced the stage to 
its present pitiable condition. We have many 
theatres nightly crowded by an eager but uncritical 
public, and no one theatre in which a critical public 
can hope to enjoy a tolerable performance. I have 
a friend who maintains that the performances are 
good enough for the audiences. But he is cynical. 
Without impeaching the justice of his contempt, 
there is a restriction to be made. The masses 
crowding the theatres may, perhaps, care for nothing 
better than what is given them; yet there is a smaller 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 1 85 

public— choice in its tastes, and large enough to 
support a theatre — which would eagerly welcome a 
fine actor or a well-written drama. Unhappily Art 
is not like Commerce, delicately sensitive to the 
laws of demand and supply. 

There is abundance of bad acting to be seen in 
Paris, as elsewhere; and bad acting, like bad writ- 
ing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on 
the French, German, Italian, or English stage: it all 
seems modelled after two or three types, and those 
the least like types of good acting. The fault 
generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good 
model, than in the successful imitation of a bad 
model. The style of expression is not simply con- 
ventional, the conventionality is absurdly removed 
from truth and grace. The majority have not 
learned to speak, much less to act: they mouth and 
gabble, look at the audience instead of their inter- 
locutors, fling emphasis at random, mistake violence 
for emotion, grimace for humour, and express their 
feelings by signs as conventional and as unlike 
nature as the gestures of a ballet-dancer. Good 
acting, on the contrary, like good writing, is re- 
markable for its individuality. It charms by its 
truth; and truth is always original. It has certain 
qualities which, belonging to the fundamental ex- 
cellences of the art, are common — such as distinct- 



1 86 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

ness and quiet power in elocution, gradation in ex- 
pression, and ruling calmness, which is never felt 
as coldness, but keeps the artist master of his 
effects; yet these qualities have in each case the 
individual stamp of the actor, and seem to belong 
only to him. 

Specimens of both bad and good are to be seen 
in perfection at the Theatre Francais. Indeed, were 
it not for a few remarkable exceptions which keep 
up the traditional standard of excellence, one would 
fear that the Theatre Francais was also sinking to 
the level of general mediocrity, and that there also 
the art was dying out. Even the traditions of the 
stage seern departing. Elocution and deportment 
seem no longer indispensable elements. Of old 
there was perhaps a somewhat pedantic fastidious- 
ness in these matters; but the error was an error 
on the right side. At present the absence of for- 
mality is supplied by a familiarity which is not 
grace. Purity of elocution was in itself a charm, 
especially when the exquisite language of Moliere 
had to be spoken. A certain stately courtesy and 
elaborate formality suited the old comedy. The 
modern actors have become less artificial without 
becoming more natural. Tragedy ceased with 
Rachel. Comedy has still Regnier, Got, Provost, 
and Madame Plessy, but who is to replace them? 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1865. 1 87 

I saw three of Moliere's comedies, "Georges 
Dandin," "Tartufe," and "Le Manage Force," with 
the greater part of "L'Amphitryon"; and with the 
exception of Regnier, Provost, and Madame Plessy, 
saw in them nothing that was not either bad or 
mediocre. Georges Dandin and Sganarelle were 
played by M. Talbot, whom I saw last year in 
"L'Avare," and whose performance of that part ex- 
cited in me the liveliest desire — to see him no more. 
That the Theatre Francais can be reduced to such 
a pass as to have no better actor for this important 
class of characters is significant of the present con- 
dition of the stage. In London we might as well 
see Mr. Cullenford play Sir Peter Teazle. Again, 
for Tartufe we had Bressant, an excellent actor in 
his own line, but as unfit for Tartufe as Charles 
Mathews is for Iago. It was Bressant's first ap- 
pearance in the part; and the idea of this hand- 
some elegant jeune premier playing the demure sen- 
sual hypocrite, was in itself a curiosity. I must do 
him the justice to say that curiosity was the sole 
emotion excited. A more complete failure I have 
seldom seen made by a good actor; but it was a 
failure from which actors might learn a valuable 
lesson, were not the lesson so often taught in vain: 
namely, the necessity of restricting themselves to 
parts for which they have the physical qualifications, 



1 88 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

Acting being personation, it is clear that unless the 
actor has the personal qualifications requisite for 
the representation of the character, no amount of 
ability in conceiving the part will avail. The Parisian 
critics who wrote in such raptures of Bressant's per- 
formance can hardly — if they were sincere — have 
understood this. 

The part of Tartufe admits of various repre- 
sentations. Moliere has sketched the character in 
such broad and general outlines, vigorous, yet want- 
ing in detail, that the actor is free to fill up these 
outlines in several ways without endangering veri- 
similitude. Tartufe may be one of those hypocrites 
whose fat hands, flabby cheeks, oystery eyes, and 
unctuous manners give them an air of comfortable 
sensualism and greasy piety, very odious, but very 
comic; or he may be dark, saturnine, lean^ lank, 
and harsh. He may be demure and velvety in his 
cat-like motions, or severe with a suppressed con- 
sciousness of his virtue and your wickedness. He 
may have thin lips or lustful eyes, cringing humility 
or hard unfeelingness. But Bressant is by nature 
excluded from the presentation of any of these 
types. He did not show any indication of having 
vividly felt the character at all, and was wholly in- 
competent to present it. His appearance and man- 
ner were those of a handsome young curate who 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 1 89 

has committed a forgery and cannot conceal his 
anxiety at the coming exposure. His love-making 
had excellent points if considered as the love-mak- 
ing of a young roue, but was utterly unlike the 
love-making of a Tartufe. When he says, in ex- 
tenuation — 

Ah! pour etre devot je n'en suis pas moins homme ; 
Et lorsqu'on vient a. voir vos celestes appas 
Un coeur se laisse prendre et ne raisonne pas. 
Je sais qu'un tel discours de moi paroit etrange, 
Mais, madame, apres tout je ne suis pas un ange, 

he threw great persuasive fervour into his voice 
and manner, but he completely dropped the persona 
of Tartufe, and assumed that of Lovelace. Then, 
again, when, trying to reassure Elmire, he says — 

Mais les gens comme nous brulent d'un feu discret, 
Avec qui, pour toujours, on est sur du secret, 

there was nothing of the oily rascality and sanc- 
tified security which the words demand. He pro- 
mised her — 

De l'amour sans scandale et du plaisir sans peur, 

with a fervour which had no touch of hypocrisy in 
it. When he is betrayed to Orgon, and artfully 
confronts his accuser by accusing himself of being 



I9O ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING*. 

a mass of infamy and vice, there was no twang in 
his tone, no artful assertion of innocence in his 
manner: the comedy of the situation was altogether 
missed. 

The only actors I have seen in the part of 
Tartufe are Bocage and our Webster. Bocage was 
saturnine and sensual, Webster was catlike and 
sensual: both were forcible, both were true. Bres- 
sant was feeble, and completely out of his element. 
Were it not for that strange ambition which prompts 
actors to attempt fine parts because the parts are 
fine, and not because the actors have the requisite 
representative qualities, it would have been inex- 
plicable that an actor like Bressant should for a 
moment have desired to play Tartufe. 

The performance of "Tartufe," on the whole, 
was by no means admirable. Provost, a really fine 
actor, was very humorous as Orgon, though some- 
what too bourgeois, both in appearance and man- 
ner. Madame Plessy, as Elmire, spoke the verses 
with exquisite ease, precision, and grace. Hers is 
the perfection of elocution, highly elaborated, yet 
only seen to be elaborated by critics, who can also 
see its ease. In her one great scene, that in which 
she lures Tartufe to disclose himself, she was very 
good. But I cannot give a word of praise to the 
rest; and considering the claims of the Theatre 



THE DRAMA IN PAJRlS. 1 865. IQI 

Francais, considering its reputation for producing 
the classic drama with minute attention to the en- 
semble, it seemed to me as if here also were visible 
the general signs of a decline of the art. 

The lively little comedy "Le Mariage Force" 
was performed in a somewhat deadly-lively manner, 
except in the one brief scene where Regnier appears 
as Doctor Pancrace. This scene, a capital satire 
on the scholastic doctors, which everyone has en- 
joyed in the reading, was played by Regnier with 
a verve and a comic verisimilitude perfectly delight- 
ful. His exuberance of fun never overstepped the 
line which separates comedy from farce. He was 
as extravagant as Moliere, and as true. The hard 
stupidity which comes from pre-occupation, the 
pedantic self-sufficiency, and the irritable self-love 
were shown in their most ludicrous forms. The 
expression of his face, when he was not listening to 
what Sganarelle was saying, but, instead of listening, 
seemed framing a reply to his antagonist, was ex- 
quisitely humorous. It was a flash of humour which 
served to clear the air, when weariness was begin- 
ning to whisper "time for bed." 

There may be two opinions respecting the per- 
formance of the classic drama at the Theatre 
Francais, there can be but one respecting the per- 
formance of modern comedy. If the traditions are 



IQ2 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

dying out, if the rising actors are less rigorously 
trained or are less endowed by nature than were 
their predecessors, so that the idealism of dramatic 
art finds few successful cultivators, at any rate the 
realists are successful. To see such a performance 
as that of Emile Augier's last comedy, "Maitre 
Guerin," revives one's faith in French acting. The 
comedy itself, like most of Augier's works, is serious 
rather than comic: the gaiety is the smile of the 
intellect, not the mirth of animal spirits, not the 
laugh which bubbles up at ludicrous images. It 
contains some admirable writing, and one or two 
piquant sayings. The interest is progressive. The 
characters, though faintly sketched, are well con- 
trasted. But the piece requires very fine acting, 
and would not bear transplantation to our stage. 

In the first act we are introduced to a young 
and brilliant coquette, Madame Lecoutellier, played 
by Madame Plessy, who has a rich old husband 
and a spendthrift young nephew. She likes the old 
man's money, but winces under the galling yoke of 
his name; nee Valtaneuse, as she delights to sign 
herself, she is forced to submit to be called Le- 
coutellier, which, for a woman of fashion with 
mundane instincts highly developed, is not pleasant. 
Her hope is to be able to purchase the estate of 
Valtaneuse, which once belonged to her family, and 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 1 93 

which is now the last remnant of the property of 
M. Desroncerets, a philanthropist, who has squan- 
dered a fortune on his inventions, and who has 
given his daughter the absolute management of his 
affairs, so that he may be saved from ruining him- 
self by further attempts at immortalising his name 
and enriching his country. The idea of this situa- 
tion is an excellent one: we have the passionate 
devotion of the old man contrasted with the un- 
usual good sense and severity of his daughter, 
forced into business habits and restrictive prudence, 
obliged to deny her father the indulgence of 
dreams which would be his ruin, obliged to seem 
hard and unfeminine out of her very tenderness 
and care for him. But the situation has been too 
imperfectly wrought out. It might have made the 
subject of a piece. M. Augier has made it a mere 
episode. 

Although Desroncerets has dispossessed himself 
of his property, no sooner does a new scheme pre- 
sent itself than he borrows money on the sly. 
Maitre Guerin, the country lawyer, is ready to pur- 
chase the estate of Valtaneuse (by means of a man 
of straw) at much less than its value; and Desron- 
cerets raises a hundred thousand francs in this way 
by a secret sale, with power to repurchase at the 
end of a year. He has no fears of being unable to 

Actors and Acting. 1 3 



194 0N ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

repurchase it — what inventor ever doubts the future? 
— and with the money thus raised he is confident 
of earning a million. There is something sad and 
comic in the scene, which was played throughout 
by Got (Maitre Guerin) in a marvellous manner. 
When I first read the piece I was unable to detect 
in Maitre Guerin the material for a fine part: all is 
so faintly indicated, and so meagre in detail, that 
the actor has the whole onus thrown upon him of 
creating a part. No sooner did Got make his ap- 
pearance than it was clear we were going to wit- 
ness an original and powerful creation. His make- 
up, gait, look, and manner were such as would 
have thrown Balzac into ecstasies. There was no 
mistaking the type. There was no doubt as to the 
intense individuality of that knowing, scheming, 
vulgar, respectable bourgeois — so prosaic, so hard, 
yet so respectable! The very man to be trusted 
and respected; the man certain to get on; certain 
never to offend prejudices, nor to overstep the 
limits of law. 

This Guerin has a son, a distinguished young 
officer, the soul of honour, very unlike his father, 
who not understanding, and rather despising him, 
nevertheless schemes for his advancement, as fathers 
with paternal egoism will scheme. Louis was 
formerly in love with Desroncerets' daughter, but 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 1 95 

her business habits and attention to money mat- 
ters chilled his enthusiasm, and he is now en- 
tangled in the meshes of the coquettish Madame 
Lecoutellier. The scene between these two, which 
closes the act, is a masterly bit of comedy. He 
comes to bid her adieu on his departure for Mexico. 
She does not wish to lose him, though — coquette- 
like — she only wants him to dangle after her. She 
insinuates that if he joins his regiment he cannot 
care for her. He pleads his honour, which forbids 
his changing his regiment on the eve of a cam- 
paign. She suggests that her husband has influence 
enough to get him promoted. He replies coldly, 
"Your husband! Thank you, madame, but I do 
not choose to owe my promotion to anyone but 
myself, least of all to your husband." With an air 
of affected ignorance, she asks him, "Why?" "You 
have forbidden me to say." "That's true; and I 
admire the scrupulous fidelity with which you obey 
orders!" "I treat the honour of others with the 
same respect as my own. You told me one day 
that to declare love to a married woman was as 
great an insult as to propose to a soldier to desert 
his standard." "Perhaps I exaggerated a little!" 
It is impossible to conceive the finesse with which 
Madame Plessy uttered these words. Indeed, her 
whole performance during this scene was enchanting. 

13* 



I96 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

It was the quintessence of feminine wile. The pretty- 
little bouderie, the provoking scepticism, the deli- 
cately yet plainly implied avowals, were enough to 
turn the head of a stronger man. Poor Louis of 
course succumbs; carried away by the thought that 
she loves him, he passionately declares that he will 
at once quit the army. He leaves her horrified at 
the idea. She is afraid that having quitted the 
army for her sake, "il se croirait des droits," which 
is precisely what the coquette will not permit. At 
this juncture the news arrives of the sudden death 
of her husband. She writes to Louis, "I am a 
widow; respect my year of mourning; depart, and 
do not write to me." She thus gains a year's de- 
lay; and "dans un an, tout ceci sera de l'histoire 
ancienne." 

A year has elapsed at the opening of the second 
act. In that year Desroncerets has lost all his 
money; Madame Lecoutellier and her nephew have 
been to law about the will of the deceased Lecou- 
tellier, and Louis Guerin has distinguished himself 
in the campaign, returning as colonel. Guerin, 
who finds himself on the eve of becoming possessor 
of Valtaneuse, tells his wife of his plans to marry 
Louis to Madame Lecoutellier. To render this pos- 
sible he commences by diminishing the distance 
between the fortunes of the lady and his son. How? 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 1 97 

First, by persuading her to compromise the lawsuit 
with her nephew, and divide the property. Secondly, 
by tempting her with the chateau of Valtaneuse. A 
very comic scene occurs between the aunt and 
nephew, in which Guerin tries to persuade them to 
divide the property; an idea acceptable to both, 
were it not that they are so enraged with the 
aspersions of each other's advocates. Even this 
obstacle may be set aside, Arthur says, by their 
marrying each other. The disgust of Guerin at 
such a proposition (so subversive of all his plans) 
was excessively comic and wonderfully true. As he 
cannot openly oppose it, he resolves to frustrate it 
by stratagem. When she departs he pretends that 
she has dropped a letter. This letter is the one 
written to her by Louis a year before, but never 
delivered. It rouses Arthur's jealousy, as Guerin 
intended. 

The third act is somewhat weaker than the 
others. The upshot of it is that Guerin proposes 
to Madame Lecoutellier that she should marry Louis, 
and thus become mistress of Valtaneuse, which he 
is about to possess. She consents. In the fourth 
act Desroncerets, unable to raise or borrow money, 
applies to his daughter for funds. She refuses. A 
powerful scene (very indifferently acted) occurs 
here, in which the loving daughter is forced to seem 



I98 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

harsh, forced to disobey her father, forced at le'ngth 
to confess that he has spent all his money, and 
that for the last three years they have been living 
on her dowry. 

The secret once disclosed, Louis, who turned 
from her because he thought her mercenary, now 
turns back again repentant to her feet. But he 
discovers the plan by which her father will be de- 
prived of his only resource, the chateau of Valta- 
neuse. His sense of honour is justly outraged at 
such an act, and he feels called upon to prevent it. 
He does prevent it — pays back the money; maddens 
his father, who disinherits him; and marries Francine 
Desroncerets. The final scene of quarrel is very 
dramatic. Guerin is utterly baffled, and his rage is 
tragi-comical. Even his wife deserts him; she who, 
for five-and-thirty years, has been his patient victim, 
now raises her head, and declares her purpose of 
quitting the house with her son. The author has not 
sufficiently prepared this — indeed, it is in contra- 
diction with the spirit and language of the earlier 
scenes in which Madame Guerin speaks of her hus- 
band as the best of men, and seems devoted to 
him; nevertheless, it is a powerful dramatic inci- 
dent; and when Guerin is left solitary, the solitude of 
selfishness is vividly indicated by his being reduced 
to ask the man of straw to stay and dine with him. 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 1 99 

Nothing could be more natural or more sug- 
gestive than Got's acting of this part. From first 
to last it was a study; and I can give our actors no 
better advice than to read the play, picture to them- 
selves how they would perform the part of Guerin, 
and then go to Paris and carefully watch Got. 
Such acting is worth the study of every artist, no 
matter what his line, because it exhibits vividly the 
singular effect which is produced by truthfulness. 
Every gesture, every look, every tone of the actor, 
seems instinct with the bourgeois nature. The way 
he uses his handkerchief, the way he sits down, the 
smallest detail, is prompted by an inward vision of 
the nature of the man represented. Then, again, 
Madame Plessy, though, as a woman, without much 
charm, as an artist is well worth studying, not only 
because of the refined naturalness of her manner, 
but also on account of the exquisite skill of her 
elocution. 

The great difficulty in elocution is to be slow, 
and not to seem slow. To speak the phrases with 
such distinctness, and such management of the 
breath, that each shall tell, yet due proportion be 
maintained. Hurry destroys the effect; and actors 
hurry, because they dread, and justly dread, the 
heaviness of a slow utterance. The art is so to 
manage the time that it shall not appear slow to 



200 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

the hearer; and this is an art very rarely under- 
stood by actors. No sooner have they to express 
excitement or emotion of any kind than they seem 
to lose all mastery over the rhythm and cadence of 
their speech.* Let them study great speakers, and 
they will find that in passages which seem rapid 
there is a measured rhythm, and that even in the 
whirlwind of passion there is as strict a regard to 
tempo as in passionate music. Resident flexibility is 
the perfection of elocution. 

Comedy nobly justifies its existence when it 
dignifies amusement with a healthy, moral tendency, 
carrying a lesson in its laugh, a warning in its pic- 
tures. Too often the comedy of our day holds 
itself aloof from the realities of life, and seeks 

* Sanson, the excellent professor of elocution, tells us how — 

d'un mot plaisant, terrible, ou tendre 
On double la valeur en le faisant attendre ; 

a point well understood by the elder Kean, who, however, 
often allowed his pauses to degenerate into tricks. Sanson 
adds: 

Tantot l'agile voix se precipite et vole; 
Tantot il faut savoir ralentir sa parole. 
Ignorant de son art les plus vulgaires lois 
' Plus d'un acteur se laisse entrainer par sa voix ; 
Sa rapide parole etourdit l'auditoire: 
77 semble concourir pour un prix de memoire. 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 201 

amusement in the fantastic combination of incidents 
and characters which have only a distant reference 
to the on-goings of society. Hence the common 
phrase, "that is all very well on the stage:" thus 
the satire becomes harmless because felt to be 
fantastic; the moral is sterile because inapplicable. 
In the comedy — or shall I not rather call it 
tragedy? — of "Les Lionnes Pauvres," by Emile 
Augier and E. Foussier, which was revived at the 
"Vaudeville" recently, and which, though wretchedly 
performed, was terribly affecting, the authors have 
shown us what comedy may be — should be. They 
have boldly laid bare one of the hideous sores of 
social life, and painted the consequences of the 
present rage for dress and luxury which is rapidly 
demoralising the middle classes of Europe. No 
one who knows how severe is the struggle of families 
having small and fixed incomes, can contemplate 
without dismay the tendency of all classes to imitate 
the extravagance of the classes above them. What 
Goethe humourously says of literary aspirants, that 
no one is contented to be a cobbler, every one pre- 
tending to be a poet — 

Niemand will em Schuster seyn; 
Jedermann ein Dichter — 

is true of social aspirants. We all belong to the 



202 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

aristocracy. If we cannot ride in our own carriages, 
we can wear dresses only meant to be worn in a 
carriage. If we cannot delude our friends into the 
belief that we are rich, we will do our best to 
delude strangers in the street. We may not be 
duchesses, but we will dress as like them as our 
means and imitations will permit. The crinoline 
disease corrupts all classes. The wife of a clerk 
whose salary is four pounds a week sweeps the dirt 
of the pavement with her silken train, and is neither 
dismayed by the uncleanliness nor ashamed of the 
extravagance: if anyone mildly remonstrates on this 
wicked waste, she quietly answers, "They are worn 
so!" Such extravagance can only be supported by 
debts which end in dishonour, or by a pinching 
economy at home. The necessaries are sacrificed 
to the vanities. The husband and children suffer, 
that the wife and mother may "make a figure" — 
which she doesn't. In Italy and France one hears 
it universally said that wives purchase their toilettes 
with the honour of their husbands. In England 
such an accusation would be indignantly repelled. 
Meanwhile even in England the excess of expendi- 
ture must be made up by a corresponding deficiency 
somewhere. "In France," say our authors, as long 
"as the wife remains virtuous, the husband pays 
twopence for a penny loaf. Then comes the time 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 203 

when he pays a penny for a twopenny loaf. She 
begins by robbing and ends by enriching the house." 
The husband is hoodwinked. He is in a state of 
chronic amazement at the progress of manufactures, 
the cheapness of silks, the marvels of "bargains" 
that are to be had by those who will spend one- 
half of their time in contriving their toilettes, and 
the other half in exhibiting them. He never suspects 
where all this splendour comes from, until he opens 
his eyes to his dishonour. 

In "Les Lionnes Pauvres" this danger and this 
vice are painted with a firm, remorseless hand. 
Unhappily, the details are some of them such as 
would scarcely be tolerated on our stricter stage: 
but with that exception the comedy is worthy of 
the highest praise. It is badly acted by everyone 
except Felix, who plays the part of moral censor 
with charming ease and incisive effect. His art of 
branding vice with an epigram, and of uttering a 
moral while never for one moment committing the 
mistake of assuming the air of sermonising supe- 
riority, could not be surpassed. The laughter left 
behind it a serious reflection. Take Felix away, 
however, and the performance is one which must 
make every Englishman pause to consider the justice 
of the popular opinion that the French stage is 
greatly superior to the English in the perfection of 



204 0N ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

its ensemble. Indeed, that opinion seems to me to 
require revision. I do not speak of the Vaudeville 
only, but of the theatres in general. There are 
good actors, admirable actors, on the French stage; 
but a really good ensemble I saw but at one theatre 
— the Porte St. Martin — where the "Vingt Ans 
Apres " of Dumas was played by Melingue, Clarence, 
Lacressoniere, Montal, and Mdlle. Duverger, in the 
principal parts, and very tolerable actors in the 
subordinate parts, presenting a combination such 
as we can make no claim to, and such as I did not 
see elsewhere rivalled. It will, of course, be under- 
stood that I do not place the Theatre Francais 
below the Porte St. Martin in absolute, but in 
relative merit. There are far better actors at the 
Theatre Frangais; and in "Maitre Guerin" the 
ensemble was satisfactory. But the standard of that 
theatre is, in all respects, higher; and in the per- 
formance of the classic drama it is certainly in- 
ferior to the performance of melodrama at the Porte 
St. Martin. 

Altogether, my visit to this Boulevard theatre 
was very gratifying, and I could not help thinking 
what a gain it would be to our actors if they would 
go there and study the art. They would see that 
it was by no means necessary to outrage nature 
for the sake of effect; and that in the important 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 20$ 

matter of management of the voice much might be 
learned, especially that the simple inflexions of 
natural utterance were far more telling than the 
growls of the voix de venire, or the surprising 
mouthings which with us are mistaken for effective 
elocution. They would also see that attention to 
the business of the scenes could be given without 
thrusting themselves forward and overdoing their 
parts. 

Not that these Porte St. Martin actors are irre- 
proachable. By no means. They, too, have their 
conventionalities and their shortcomings. But if 
they fall short of a high standard, they are, com- 
pared with what we are accustomed to see in Eng- 
land, simple, natural, and excellent. One of them 
I am tempted to single out, partly because of the 
rare qualities of his performance, and partly be- 
cause, being a young actor who has not yet made 
a reputation, his name does not figure in large 
type beside that of Melingue, Clarence, and Lacres- 
soniere. It is no exaggeration to say that to see 
this young man, Montal, play the part of Mordaunt 
in "Vingt Ans Apres," is worth a journey to Paris 
for any actor who is bent on mastering some of 
the secrets of his art. On his very first appearance, 
as he stood silent in the background, there was no 
mistaking that an impressive actor was before us. 



206 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

He had the rare power of being silently eloquent; 
of standing quite still and yet riveting attention on 
him. I knew not who he was, and had never seen 
the play, yet felt at once that in the pale young 
monk standing on the stairs at the back of the 
stage, there was something boding and fateful. 
Much of this, of course, was due to the physique 
of the actor; but even actors who had no such 
nervous temperament and sharply-cut features might 
imitate the quietness and significance of his gestures. 
As the play proceeded, it became evident that his 
range of expression was limited, and that he could 
not adequately represent emotion in its higher 
forms; but terror, sarcasm, sombre scheming, and 
serpentine adroitness, were admirably expressed by 
him. So effective were his make-up, gestures, looks, 
and manners, that on quitting the theatre, and for 
many days afterwards, my imagination was haunted 
by the vision. 

The heroine was played by Mdlle. Duverger, 
interesting to me as the actress whom it was under- 
stood we were shortly to see on the London boards, 
in accordance with that surprising fashion of im- 
porting foreigners which the success of Fechter has 
introduced. The fashion is not complimentary to 
our public taste. Is it that we have been so tolerant 
of laxity in the matter of elocution, and have shown 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 207 

so little fastidiousness as to how our noble language 
was spoken, that managers believed we should not 
wince at the strange caprices of foreign accent and 
rhythm? A few years ago the public would not 
accept Miss Smithson (now Madame Berlioz) be- 
cause of her Irish accent; yet Fechter, Mdlle. Stella 
Collas, and Mdlle. Beatrice have found enthusiastic 
admirers. In a little while we may rival even the 
Germans in endurance. They listened without 
protest to the negro actor, Aldridge, declaiming 
"Othello" in English, while all the other characters 
spoke German. And the Germans, we constantly 
hear, are "a nation of critics!" 

As we were to have Mdlle. Duverger in Eng- 
land, I watched her performance with some curiosity. 
One excellent quality she undoubtedly has: fine 
eyes. If you ask me, What are her talents as an 
actress? my answer is, She has fine eyes. A pretty 
woman has always the talent of being pretty; and 
the mass of playgoers in our day demand little 
more. How Mdlle. Duverger may manage to fill 
certain parts with beauty and costume we must 
wait to see; but of this much I am assured by the 
one performance I witnessed, that, as an actress, 
she is thoroughly conventional, and not impressive 
in her conventionality. 



208 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

I have been instructing myself in Christian 
mythology as presented on the French stage. Not 
even the heat nor the tumult of a popular theatre 
could keep me from "Paradise Lost" at the Ga'ite; 
the attraction of the Fall of the Angels, Pan- 
demonium, Adam and Eve, the death of Abel, the 
children of Cain, and the Deluge, was irresistible. 
You can with ease imagine the kind of boulevard 
poetry and religious sentiment, un peu fort de cafe, 
which a melodramatic spectacle on this theme 
would produce; but there were points in the per- 
formance which you could not have imagined — at 
least, which I could not — and that serves the turn 
of my sentence quite as well. You may have pic- 
tured to yourself the rebel angels personated by a 
dozen supers in dresses of no particular period; 
you may have imagined a stout ballet-girl in very 
scant clothing representing Eve; a well-shaved Adam 
in skins and fleshings; and a Cain with hair and 
beard trimmed in the latest style; but I deny that 
you could have conceived a Satan so jovial and 
grotesque, — such a compound of Falstaff turned 
acrobat, and a First Murderer dreaming of "lead- 
ing business"! It is no exaggeration to say that I 
was quite haunted all yesterday by the vision of 
that fat man in scaly costume representing the 
Serpent, a tempter with the sort of fat elasticity of 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 200, 

bearing which we sometimes observe in the French 
Banting — "caught young." What the authors had 
put into his mouth was sufficiently grotesque and 
eminently French, especially where Satan makes 
love to Eve, and, on being repulsed by that 
matron/ kneels at her feet and weeps in the ap- 
proved style: "Satan a tes pieds! Satan pleure!" 
says the tempter — as if that must be irresistible! 

The audience seemed intensely interested, not 
only in this love-making, but in every other scene 
of the great mythic drama; and when Eve tries to 
awaken the better feelings of Cain, and appeals to 
him as a bourgeoise mother would appeal to her re- 
fractory son (on the stage), recalling the early years 
of maternal solicitude and maternal anguish, the 
women around me were incessantly wiping their 
eyes, and the men before me were deeply interested. 
There were, indeed, a few sceptical young men who 
seemed only impressed by the ludicrous aspect of 
the actors or the scenes. But the mass of the 
audience evidently accepted this mystery-play of 
the nineteenth century with as much seriousness as 
their ancestors in the fourteenth century accepted 
the naive representations of Biblical stories which 
their priests furnished in good faith. And this con- 
stituted the real interest of the performance to me. 
This was one of the points which I had not been 

Actors and Acting. 14 



2IO ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

prepared for. Yet while I saw the seriousness of 
the people in presence of a singularly vulgar and 
unimaginative reproduction of one of the grand 
stories of human destiny, and thought of the shock 
such a presentation would give to the feelings of 
Protestants in what they would irresistibly feel to 
be a degradation of the mysteries of religion, I 
could not help recognising that the Catholic audience, 
especially the lower classes, would have been so 
prepared from infancy by what they daily saw in 
their churches and cathedrals, that the idea of any 
irreverence or of any vulgarisation would not occur 
to them. After the images they had worshipped 
from childhood, the aspect of the Angel Michael, 
with a flaming sword and superb wings, announcing 
to Satan that the Creator had just endowed the 
•universe with the earth, dilicieux sejour, as he said, 
for the new favourite, Man, the stage must have 
seemed the more imposing of the two. And, pro- 
bably, their imaginations of the flight of Cain had 
never pictured anything so picturesquely awful as 
the tableaux which here reproduced on a large scale 
the picture by Prudhon one does not admire in the 
gallery of the Louvre. 

It was not for the acting that I went to the 
. Gaite. I had seen Dumaine, the hero of this house, 
as N. T. Hicks used to be of the transpontine 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 211 

theatres, and did not anticipate that his performance 
of Satan would be striking, though it proved, as I 
said, immensely droll. But I did expect that Montal 
would have made something of Cain. Montal some 
months ago played the villain in "Vingt Ans Apres," 
and made one feel before he spoke that he was an 
evil influence; I was therefore curious to see him 
in another kind of part. Alas! as Cain he showed 
no good quality. It was an ungrateful part to play, 
and he played it ungratefully. He was violent, ill 
at ease, conventional. But he was surpassed in 
badness by Clarence, who used to be an excellent 
jeune premier, and who as Adam gave a ludicrous 
illustration of what the coat-and-waistcoat style of 
acting comes to when it has to deal with anything 
more elevated. 

Yet the effect of the story, so impressive in its 
religious associations, and so interesting to the 
universal heart in its human suggestions, aided by 
a splendid spectacle, has made this very prosaic 
and absurd piece, in spite of the acting, one of the 
great successes of the year. The house is crowded 
every night. With us the Lord Chamberlain would 
not even permit the title to appear on the bills; 
and even if there were no licenser of plays, the 
public would tear up the benches at the opening 
scene of the fall of the Angels, so profound would 



212 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

be the agitation of horror at the sight of what 
would seem this daring desecration of things sacred. 
To the French it is anything but blasphemous; and 
we make a great mistake in supposing that there 
is not as much good honest religious feeling in 
France as in England, though it may take a dif- 
ferent shape. 

To this account I will add the notice of a pro- 
fessedly religious performance of a dramatic kind, 
given not in Paris, but in Antwerp. The contrast 
is as great as might be expected from the two 
cities. 

Antwerp is delightful by day when the churches 
are open and the gallery is to be enjoyed; but 
Antwerp at night, after you have well explored its 
streets and know its architecture, is not an emi- 
nently amusing city. There are men who can sit in 
a cafe, or smoke and dawdle through the post- 
prandial hours, and be content. I am less easily 
contented, and whenever I am away from my own 
hearthrug, the shades of evening bring with them a 
restless desire for music or dramatic entertainment. 
At Antwerp there was nothing of the kind. Not 
even my desire for amusement could be cheated 
with the dreary performance of an equestrian troop, 
foreseen to be a spectacle of bony women jumping 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 213 

through hoops, and hideous men vaulting on and 
off horses, to the sounds of a most brassy band. I 
preferred the hotel. 

What, then, was my agitation of delight when, 
restlessly reading everything like a placard which 
promised performance of one thing or another, I 
came upon a huge bill, headed "Theatre des 
Varietes," setting forth that a performance of the 
Ober-Ammergau mystery-play on the Life and Death 
of our Saviour would take place on the Sunday? A 
theatre seemed a strange place for this religious 
performance (Groote Godsdienstige Voorstelling), 
and I had always imagined that the Ober-Ammergau 
peasants performed in the open air. Nevertheless 
the chance of seeing this spectacle — the last linger- 
ing remains of the mediaeval drama, when plays 
were played in churches, and the actors were priests 
— was so exciting that I rushed off immediately 
after breakfast to secure places, without any regard 
to congruity. 

Such a performance was indeed in all respects 
exceptional. A dingy little theatre, where one would 
expeot to see broad farces and bloody melodrames, 
was to be the scene of a mimic representation of 
the most solemn and affecting of stories — a story 
so sacred that to Protestant feeling there is some- 
thing shocking in the idea of its being brought 



214 0N ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

into the remotest relation with anything like amuse- 
ment, especially theatrical amusement. And, never- 
theless, I believe that any Protestant who could 
have overcome the first repulsion would have wit- 
nessed the performance not only with deep interest 
but with the acknowledgment that it was really 
religious. Certain it is that on the Catholic audience 
assembled there the effect was purely that of reli- 
gious awe and sympathetic interest. I am sorry to 
be obliged to add that the effect was transitory. 
Each scene was witnessed with hushed and engrossed 
attention; but as the curtain fell the spectators 
relapsed into gabble, laughter, and eatables, as if 
they were indeed "at the play." This rather irritated 
me at the time; but now I bethink me that good 
Protestants may be seen coming out of church after 
listening to a most edifying discourse respecting 
the next world, and yet be chattering about the 
affairs of this world with lively levity. 

Now as to the performance. It represented, in 
eighteen tableaux vivants, the most symbolic inci- 
dents in the sacred life, from the Nativity to the 
Resurrection. There being only pantomimic action, 
and no speaking, the dangers of vulgarisations or 
of ludicrous suggestion were avoided. The organ 
played during each scene and helped to deepen the 
impression. The stage was arrayed with black baize 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 215 

at the wings and back, thus forming a dark back- 
ground against which the figures stood in relief. 
Occasionally a tree or seat occupied the foreground. 
The dresses were such as one usually sees in small 
provincial theatres, and the wigs and beards were 
especially rude. At first I feared the performance 
was going to be painfully childish in its attempts 
at illusion; for in the "Adoration of the Shepherds" 
there was a large doll lamb which baa'd when the 
boy pulled down its head — an attempt at realism 
which promised ill for what was to come. The 
pretty picture which followed — "The Flight into 
Egypt" — showed us Mary on a pasteboard donkey, 
with the infant in her arms; and the child had been 
taught to open his arms and bless the world, and 
to kiss his mother, with very touching simplicity. 
After this the performance was really remarkable in 
as far as it depended on the Christ — a tall and 
very handsome man, with noble and gentle bearing, 
who is said to prepare himself for the performance 
by weeks of prayer and meditation, and to suffer 
greatly from exhaustion when the excitement of 
acting is over. The others were all as bad as bad 
could be; but he was affecting. The adieu to his 
mother and friends at Bethany, the agony in the 
garden, the bearing of the cross, and meeting with 
Veronica, tasked his powers of mimic expression 



2l6 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

severely, and showed him to be in earnest or to be 
a great artist. The shudder of horror which ran 
through the house when the soldier smote him on 
the cheek proved how thorough was the imaginative 
belief of the audience. Never once throughout the 
long and varied scenes did he "drop the mask," 
and pass out of the character he had assumed. 
His action was fluent and unconventional, his face 
highly and variously expressive. 

Many of the tableaux were imitated from cele- 
brated pictures. Leonardo da Vinci of course was 
followed in the "Last Supper." The "Descent 
from the Cross" was copied from Rubens; the 
entombment and resurrection from various old 
pictures; the denial of Peter was excellently 
managed, but I could not recall any especial ori- 
ginal for it. 

On the whole, I came away satisfied that the 
effect of such performances was wholly beneficial. 
The common mind can only be impressed by visible 
symbols; and when these symbols are associated 
with primitive emotions, their influence is religious. 
Nothing can be more unlike this "Godsdienstige 
Voorstelling" than the audacious spectacle of "Le 
Paradis Perdu," where Satan made love to Eve in 
the style of a French novelist, and Eve had the 
most painful resemblance to a ballet-girl. Here at 



THE DRAMA IN PARIS. 1 865. 2i; 

Antwerp, if a critical taste would have found many 
things to alter, it would have found none that were 
even remotely injurious to the public mind. Had 
the audience showed a little hypocrisy, and pre- 
tended that the performance had not only deeply 
moved them but had solemnised their thoughts for 
a while, I should have been wholly pleased; but 
the audience, to their credit be it said, had no 
thought of pretence in the matter. 



2l8 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The Drama in Germany. 1867. 

The Drama is everywhere in Europe and America 
rapidly passing from an Art into an Amusement; 
just as of old it passed from a religious ceremony 
into an Art. Those who love the Drama cannot 
but regret the change, but all must fear that it is 
inevitable when they reflect that the stage is no 
longer the amusement of the cultured few, but the 
amusement of the uncultured and miscultured masses, 
and has to provide larger and lower appetites with 
food. For one playgoer who can appreciate the 
beauty of a verse, the delicate humour of a concep- 
tion, or the exquisite adaptation of means to ends 
which gives ease and harmony to a work of art, 
there are hundreds who, insensible to such delights, 
can appreciate a parody, detect a pun, applaud a 
claptrap phrase of sentiment, and be exhilarated by 
a jingle and a dance; for one who can recognise, 
and, recognising, can receive exquisite pleasure from, 
fine acting, thousands can appreciate costumes, bare 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY. 1 867. 2IQ. 

necks, and "powerful" grimace; thus the mass easily 
pleased and liberally paying for the pleasure, rules 
the hour. 

Unless a frank recognition of this inevitable 
tendency cause a decided separation of the drama 
which aims at Art from those theatrical perform- 
ances which only aim at Amusement of a lower 
kind (just as classical music keeps aloof from all 
contact and all rivalry with comic songs and sen- 
timental ballads), and unless this separation take 
place in a decisive restriction of one or more thea- 
tres to the special performances of comedy and the 
poetic drama, the final disappearance of the art is 
near at hand. It may be a question whether any 
capital in Europe could now sustain a theatre ap- 
pealing only to the intellectual classes; and it may 
also be a question whether dramatists and actors 
could be found competent and willing to supply 
the art, could the audiences be secured. I do not 
venture to answer these questions: the more so be- 
cause I am not insensible to the many and serious 
obstacles«in the way of establishing such a theatre; 
but considering the really large numbers of culti- 
vated minds, and the fascination to all minds of 
dramatic representation; considering further the pe- 
cuniary success of the Monday Popular Concerts in 
a city which tolerates German brass bands and 



220 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

resounds with nigger melodies, it is no extravagant 
hope that audiences might be found if adequate 
performances were offered. Not perhaps the crowds 
which enable a "sensation piece" to run two hun- 
dred nights* or a burlesque to make the fortune 
of a theatre; but it should be remembered that if 
the audiences would be less numerous, the expenses 
of the theatre would also be proportionately small. 
It is only by a rigid adherence to the principle of 
specialisation that such a scheme could have a 
chance. The theatre must be mounted with the 
sole purpose of performing works of art, for an 
art-loving public. It must avoid spectacle, scenic, 
"effects," and encroachments on the domains of 
melodrama and burlesque; as quartet concerts avoid 
the attractions of military bands and comic songs. 
It must have one small company of well-trained 
and art-loving actors [what a condition!], not a 
large miscellaneous company attempting all kinds 
of performance. 

Something like what is here indicated may be 
found in the Theatre Francais of Paris, and the 
Hof Theater in each of the German capitals. To 
be candid, one must add that none of these establish- 

* Since then "The School for Scandal" has run for 200 
nights, and "Hamlet" also for 200 nights. 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY. 1867. 221 

ments are able to dispense with Government assis- 
tance: they are not paying speculations; and if ex- 
amination or experiment should prove that in the 
nature of the case such establishments could not 
be made to pay — if there is in England really no 
public large enough to support such an undertaking 
well managed — then we have nothing but to resign 
ourselves to the inevitable destruction of the drama; 
for certainly no English Government would ever 
think of contributing a penny towards the elevation 
or the preservation of dramatic art. 

In the course of a few weeks' ramble in Ger- 
many this summer I had but rare opportunities of 
ascertaining the present condition of the dramatic 
art, although during the last thirty years I have 
from time to time been fortunate enough to see 
most of the best actors Germany has produced. Now, 
as of old, there is a real respect for the art, both 
in the public and in the actors; and at each theatre 
we see that striving after an ensemble so essential 
to the maintenance of the art, but which everywhere 
else except at the Theatre Francais is sacrificed to 
the detestable star system. In Germany we may 
see actors of the first eminence playing parts which 
in England and America would be contemptuously 
rejected by actors of third-rate rank; and the "con- 
descension," so far from lowering the favourite in 



222 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

the eyes of the public, helps to increase his favour. 
I remember when Emil Devrient, then a young 
man, came to play Hamlet at Berlin, as a "guest," 
the great tragedian Seydelmann (the only great 
tragedian in my opinion that Germany has had 
during the last quarter of a century*) undertook the 
part of Polonius. It was one of those memorable 
performances which mark an epoch in the playgoer's 
life. Such a revelation of the character, and such 
maestria of execution, one can hardly hope to see 
again. Had he played Laertes (and he would 
doubtless have consented to play it had there been 
any advantage in his doing so), he would still have 
been the foremost figure of the piece. At any rate 
he would have been the great actor, and the favourite 
of the Berliners. 

And here it is only fair to add in extenuation 
of the English actor's resistance against sacrificing 
his amour propre to the general good, that if he 
obstinately declines to appear in a part unworthy 
of his powers or his rank in the profession, he does 
so because, over and above the natural dislike of 
appearing to some disadvantage, he knows in the 
first place that the English public cares little for 

* Mr. Schutz Wilson .has just published an interesting 
"Glance at the German Stage," in which there is a sketch of 
Seydelmann. 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY. 1 867. 22$ 

an ensemble, and in the second place that the majority 
of the audience will only see him in that unworthy 
part, and consequently will form an erroneous idea 
of his capabilities. It is otherwise with the German 
actor. He knows that the public expects and cares 
for an ensemble, and he desires the general success 
of the performance, as each individual in an or- 
chestra desires that the orchestral effect should be 
perfect. He knows, moreover, that the same people 
who to-night see him in an inferior part saw him 
last week, or will see him next week, in the very 
best parts of his repertory. He has, therefore, little 
to lose and much to gain by playing well an in- 
ferior part. Further, his payment is usually regu- 
lated by the times of performance. 

Be the reasons what they may, the result is that 
always at a German Hof Theater one is sure of the 
very best ensemble that the company can present; and 
one will often receive as much pleasure from the 
performance of quite insignificant parts as from the 
leading parts on other stages. The actors are 
thoroughly trained: they know the principles of 
their art — a very different thing from knowing "the 
business"! They pay laudable attention to one 
supremely important point recklessly disregarded on 
our stage, namely elocution. They know how to 
speak — both verse and prose: to speak without 



224 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

mouthing, yet with effective cadence; speech ele- 
vated above the tone of conversation without being 
stilted. How many actors are there on our stage 
who have learned this? How many are there 
who suspect the mysterious charm which lies in 
rhythm, and have mastered its music? How many 
are there who, with an art which is not apparent 
except to the very critical ear, can manage the 
cadences and emphases of prose, so as to be at 
once perfectly easy, natural, yet incisive and effective? 
The foreigner, whose ear has been somewhat lace- 
rated by the dreadful intonations of common Ger- 
man speech, is surprised to find how rich and 
pleasant the language is when spoken on the stage; 
the truth being that the actors have learned to 
speak, and are not permitted to call themselves 
actors at a Hof Theater until they have conquered 
those slovenly and discordant intonations which 
distort the speech of vulgar men. I was made more 
than ever sensible of this refinement of elocution 
by having passed some weeks in a retired watering- 
place wholly inhabited by Germans of the trades- 
man class, whose voices and intonations so tor- 
mented me that I began to think the most hideous 
sound in nature was the cackle of half-a-dozen 
German women. To hear the women on the stage 
after that was like hearing singing after a sermon. 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY. 1 867. 22$ 

Next to excellence of elocution, which forms 
the basis of good acting, comes the excellence of 
miming — the expression of character. There are 
three great divisions of mimetic art: first, the ideal 
and passionate; secondly, the humorous realism of 
comedy; and lastly, the humorous idealism of farce. 
In the first and last divisions the German stage 
seems poorly supplied at present. But in the second 
division there is much excellence. And I remember 
this to have been always the case: tragic or poetic 
actors are rare, their power over the emotions fitful, 
but comic actors are abundant, though seldom suc- 
cessful in the riotously and fantastically humorous. 
Now precisely in this division, wherein Germany 
displays greatest power, England has at all times 
been most feeble. There has, indeed, of late years, 
arisen a certain ambition on the part of actors, and 
a demand on the part of certain audiences, which 
may be said to be leading our drama into the 
region of humorous realism and high comedy; nor 
is it without significance that this movement should 
have been coincident with an almost complete ex- 
tinction of the passionate and ideal drama; but 
without making invidious mention of a few excep- 
tions, it is simple justice to say that the efforts of 
our stage in this direction are but trivial beside the 
German, and men with us gain a reputation as 

Actors and Acting, 1 5 



226 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

"natural actors" for mimetic qualities which would 
be quite ordinary in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, or 
Weimar. 

One excellence noticeable on the German stage 
is the presentation of Character in its individual 
traits, with just that amount of accentuation which 
suffices to make it incisive and laughable, yet re- 
strains it from running over into extravagance and 
unreality. The performance at Berlin of a French 
comedy, "The Secret Agent," was an example. 

The piece itself is lively and pleasant, with no 
eminent qualities, and happily without any French 
poison — sentimental or sensual. A young German 
duke has come to the throne, but not to the seat 
of government — there he finds his mother firmly 
and pathetically seated; governing in his name, and 
for him, with a despotism which he cannot mitigate, 
and with a love of power which he cannot cheat. 
The Duchess is one of those terrible women who, 
with the softest manners and the most benevolent 
intentions, insist on a despotic carrying out of all 
their schemes, and who, representing themselves as 
on the brink of the grave, throw the responsibility 
on their contradictors of the fatal consequences 
which may ensue from a contradiction. She wields 
the sceptre, and whenever her son attempts to argue 
with her, whenever he shows the least sign of resis- 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY. 1 867. 227 

tance, her " failing health and shattered nerves" are 
invoked; she retires behind them, as the goddess 
in Homer takes refuge in a cloud. The whole play- 
is an exhibition of court life and the petty struggle 
for power. 

It was represented with a verisimilitude perfectly 
charming — not simply in the close adherence to ex- 
ternal forms, so that one felt oneself at a German 
Court; but also in the easy naturalness of demean- 
our and unforced truth of mimetic expression, which 
kept up our illusion of witnessing real events and 
real people. This is more particularly true of the 
actress who played the Grand Duchess — Frau Frieb- 
Blumauer — and the actor who played the Oberhof- 
meister — Herr Doring. All the performers were 
quiet, and acceptable, but these two were supremely 
artistic. 

Those who remember Mrs. Glover, and can 
imagine her rare and unctuous humour added to 
the refinement of Madame Plessy, may form a con- 
ception of Frau Frieb-Blumauer's presentation of 
the pathetic and dignified despot. A quiet regal 
manner, a subdued but most significant emphasis, 
a gentle imperiousness which apparently never 
dreamed of a possible resistance, a delicate inflexion 
of voice, and wonderful play of feature and of 

15* 



2 28 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

hands, kept us in a state of constant delight, as 
touch after touch gave fulness of life to the admir- 
able picture. In a part so easily lending itself to 
caricature as that of a woman falling back upon 
her "shattered nerves," Frau Frieb-Blumauer never 
approached exaggeration by look or tone, and yet 
gave every detail such unobtrusive relief that not a 
look or tone passed unobserved. Her elocution 
was a study. The drooping of her eyelids and the 
play of hands gave surprising point to very com- 
monplace remarks. Not that she ever made what 
our actors call "a point." There was nothing to 
"draw the house down." I do not remember that 
there was one burst of laughter. But she never 
was on the stage without usurping everyone's 
attention, and from first to last she kept us flutter- 
ing with the thrills of pleasure which follow the 
recognition of artistic truth. I have since been in- 
formed that she is as great in low comedy as in 
this, the highest comedy, and that she is mistress 
of all the dialects. Strange as it may seem that 
this artist, so remarkable for elegance and delicate 
nuance, should also be great in low comedy, I can 
believe it, for she seemed artist enough for any- 
thing not beyond the sphere of her physical 
organisation. At any rate, there can be no hesita- 
tion in affirming that the Berlin stage possesses an 






THE DRAMA IN GERMANY. 1 867. 220 

actress of high comedy such as nothing on our 
stage (since Mrs. Glover) can in any way approach. 
Very remarkable also was the performance of 
Herr Doring. Thirteen years ago I used to see 
him play Iago, Shylock, Nathan der Weise, and 
parts of that class. It was only by reference to 
the playbill that I could persuade myself that the 
humorous and very old master of the ceremonies 
was the same Herr Doring; and, as a testimony to 
the truth of his acting, it may be added that, 
although not inexperienced in such matters, I was 
wholly at a loss to guess how much of the age of 
his aspect and manner might be reality and how 
much mask. His face was old, his voice was old, 
his back was old, his legs were old. And as 
thirteen years may bring enormous changes (say 
from sixty to seventy-three), in my ignorance of 
what his age might have been when I saw his Iago 
and Shylock, it was a puzzle to me to form a 
notion of the degree in which nature assisted art in 
this very truthful and very droll representation of 
an old man. Although actors rightly take advantage 
of every physical peculiarity, youthful or aged, 
which the better enables them to represent a cha- 
racter, and the audience only cares for the representa- 
tion, not for the means employed, there is nevertheless 
an increased enjoyment when art is known to be 



23O ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

creating the very means. We do not admire a man 
for being old, but we admire him for miming age. 
All my doubts about Herr Doring were cleared up 
on the following night, when the shrivelled, crumpled, 
toothless, pottering old master of the ceremonies 
gave place to a dignified, firm-backed, powerful man 
of fifty. 

It would be to convey an exaggerated concep- 
tion of the German stage to allow this notice of 
what I saw at Berlin to stand as other than ex- 
ceptional. I saw nothing like it elsewhere, though 
at Dresden also there was very creditable ensemble; 
and two friends of mine (one a rare artist) speak 
of an actor they saw at Coburg as possessing 
remarkable powers in high comedy. They also 
confirm my impression that in the passionate drama 
and in the exuberance of low comedy the Germans 
are at present defective. Let it be added that if 
the Germans lack the foace of tragic emotion and 
of ebullient fun, they also avoid as a general rule 
the cold vehemence of rant, and the coarse vehemence 
of grimace. 

The only tragedy I saw was Hebbel's "Niebe- 
lungen," which was produced at Dresden during my 
stay there. Why this remarkable work had remained 
untouched for six years after its successful produc- 
tion at Weimar, especially when one reflects on the 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY. 1867. 23 1 

poverty of the German drama, is a managerial 
mystery, rendered all the more obscure by the fact 
that the management could believe in the attrac- 
tiveness of such tedious works (pace Shakspeare!) 
as the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," "The Comedy 
of Errors," and the "Midsummer Night's Dream," 
all three of which were performed in as many 
weeks. This by the way. I had heard Hebbel's 
trilogy of "The Niebelungen" spoken of as the 
firest work produced since Schiller, and was 
delighted at the chance of seeing it performed. It 
is a work which would ill bear transplanting from 
the German soil, being rather a romantic poem 
thm a tragedy, and implying a certain acquaintance 
with the old mythological world it reproduces. 
Bu, readers of German will thank me for calling 
the'r attention to it, if they have not already anticipated 
me. 

Only the two first parts of the trilogy were 
performed during my stay at Dresden. The perfor- 
mance was respectable. The actor who took the 
part of Siegfried was young, handsome, and spirited 
— umappily he was incapable of expressing strong 
emotbn, and rushed into loudness on the slightest 
provocation. The heroines were both wanting in 
tragic force; but they and three of the other 
perfomers spoke the verse with artistic effect, and 



2 $2 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

the play throughout was carried forward without 
offence — which is saying much. 

Thanks to the existence of Court Theatres, 
there is still some strenuous effort to keep up the 
character of the stage, and stem the rush of vulgar 
appetites towards vulgar food. In Germany, as 
elsewhere, costumes and bare backs, spectacle and 
buffoonery, French ingenuity and French frivolity, 
dancing and comic songs, allure the crowds who 
have more eye than soul: — 

Man kommt zu schaun, man will am liebsten sehen. 

and as theatres must be filled, the temptation to 
fill them with what the multitude prefers, ratler 
than with what the multitude ought to prefer, is 
very strong. The shop windows of Berlin are 
unhappily variegated with the photographs of 
actresses who have more bust than talent, nore 
impudence than accomplishment; and the lively 
licentiousness of Offenbach's musical farces draws 
crowds to the hundredth performance, just ss in 
unholy Paris: the cancan (which the French tolice 
interdict, or used to interdict, in the balls of 
students and grisettes) being nightly encored with- 
out a murmur raised. When one sees what the 
performances are which fill the houses r/leased 
from Court control and forced to rely soely on 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY. 1 86 7. 2^3 

the attractiveness of a pretty woman or the splendour 
of a mise en sctne, one is thankful for the existence 
of theatres not solely directed by the desire to 
make money. Even in these Court theatres there 
are unmistakable signs of the decay, elsewhere so 
patent, in the increasing reliance on slight French 
vaudevilles, and hybrid pieces of spectacle, music 
and farce. But at any rate the lover of the drama 
is not without some comfort. There is still a 
public which appreciates classical works. There 
are still theatres where classical works form an im- 
portant part of the repertory. Thus, during the 
five weeks of my stay at Dresden we had "Egmont," 
"Fiesco," "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," "The 
Comedy of Errors," "The Midsummer Night's 
Dream," and "The Merchant of Venice," with a 
comedy of Raupach's, Hebbel's tragedy "The 
Niebelungen," and a comedy by Franz on the 
subject of the Junius Letters (a very amusing work, 
full of political spirit, such as would have excluded 
it from our stage, and only defective in the surpris- 
ingly loose manner with which Sir Philip Francis 
kept his secret, so that everyone by turns discovered 
it, and the actor could never prevent the stagey 
start and "confusion," whenever the subject of the 
Junius authorship was approached). And to these 
works should be added the operas "Oberon," "Don 



234 0N ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

Juan," "The Huguenots," "Robert the Devil," 
"Masaniello," "Lohengrin," "Tannhauser," "Der 
Fliegende Hollander," the only light operas being 
"L'Elisir d'Amore" and "Czar und Zimmermann." 
This, it must be owned, is an array of works 
presupposing a very different audience from that 
which supports Offenbach and Company; and a 
similar array might have been seen on the playbills 
of every other Hof Theater. There was no 
memorable excellence exhibited by any one actor 
to stir the higher emotions; but there was a level 
respectability which, in comparison with the acting 
on our stage, might rank as excellence. The stage 
is still an intellectual amusement in Germany. 

The frequent performance of Wagner's operas 
at the theatre and at popular concerts was to me 
not a little surprising in the face of the reckless 
and contemptuous assertions of French and English 
critics to the effect that Wagner is only supported 
by a small and noisy clique. The significant fact 
that after twenty years of extravagant applause and 
extravagant abuse, when all novelty must long ago 
have passed away, the various theatres of Germany 
and the various concert rooms can still find 
Wagner's music as attractive (I will not say more 
attractive, although that also might be reasonably 
urged) as the music of Meyerbeer, ought surely to 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY. 1867. 2^5 

give the critics pause. I do not myself venture to 
pronounce an opinion on the vexed question whe- 
ther this music is really destined to be the "music 
of the future," or whether it is a pretentious and 
chaotic effort. This is a question beyond my com- 
petence. I may confess that the music rarely 
charms me, and that, as far as my ear in its pre- 
sent state of musical education determines what is 
exquisite for it, the Wagner music wants both form 
and melody. But then a little reflection suffices to 
remind one how such negative judgments, even 
from far more competent critics, are liable to com- 
plete reversal. It is not many years since Beethoven 
was laughed at, and Rossini sneered at as a flashy 
worthless tickler of the popular ear; indeed, an 
eminent musician once confessed to me that he 
had pronounced "the rage in favour of Rossini a 
passing folly," adding, "and now I regard him as 
one of the greatest musical creators that ever lived." 
How Bellini and Donizetti fared, and how Verdi 
still fares at the hands of the critics who are ex- 
asperated at the European success of such music, 
we all know. Yet these critics, so scornful of 
Verdi, are even more irate with Wagner, who 
offers something quite different from the hackneyed 
operatic forms. Surely in their weariness at the 
commonplaces of the Italian opera they might be 



236 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

expected to welcome the novelty of Wagner? Yet 
no. The very effort to create a new form is de- 
nounced, and a patient hearing is denied. It is 
with music as with all the other arts. Repeat the 
old forms, and the critics (justly) denounce the 
want of originality. Present new forms, and the 
critics are put out — deprived of their standards — 
and denounce the heresy. It is for the public to 
discover the real genius in the artist, and it does 
so by its genuine response to his work. 

And here arises the question, How shall we 
recognise the real "Vox populi" in such a case? 
What constitutes a discriminating public? For a 
new philosophy or a new form of art there can at 
first be only a small minority; but a group of 
genuine admirers — souls really moved, and re- 
sponding because moved — implies the existence of 
larger groups; and whenever we see a new idea 
steadily increasing its number of adherents, we 
may be pretty certain that a Public is forming 
which will one day lose all the characters of a 
sect. The nature of the idea may always circum- 
scribe this Public within comparatively narrow 
limits; thus the philosophy of Kant, or the music 
of Beethoven, would always be excluded from a 
vast mass of minds not in themselves insensible to 
philosophy or music; but the definition of a Public 



THE DRAMA IN GERMANY. 1 867. 2^J 

does not depend on numbers, it depends on 
generations — the constant renewal and propagation 
of kindred minds. 

Let us apply this reasoning to the case of 
Wagner. Little as I, for one, can — at present and 
after very superficial acquaintance with his works — 
respond to the enthusiasm which his music excites 
in many, there is the noticeable fact staring me in 
the face that many — and an increasing many — are 
enthusiastic about it; that not only musical fanatics 
proclaim him to be a great genius, but that the 
musical audiences of Germany crowd the theatres 
and testify in concert rooms by their applause their 
enjoyment of these operas which affect me as 
horribly noisy, very monotonous, and wanting in 
charm. Why am I to set up my judgment against 
theirs? If the music does not natter my ear, I can 
keep out of its way, unless — which perhaps would 
be the more prudent course — I cultivated a little 
self- suspicion, and withheld all peremptory judg- 
ment, finding firstly, that other and more educated 
ears detect form and grace where mine detect none; 
secondly, that I myself occasionally recognise very 
delightful passages, and may therefore expect that 
on a longer acquaintance I may learn to admire 
what is now not admirable. 

Standing outside the circle I can nevertheless 



238 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

see and admit that a Public for Wagner is steadily 
forming. What will be its magnitude or importance 
no one can pretend to decide. Whether our chil- 
dren will sneer at us for not having recognised 
Wagner, or whether they will be following some 
greater genius, is more than anyone should venture 
to pronounce. But this much seems clear: Wagner 
has established his claim to a patient hearing. We 
ought to do our best to appreciate the Art he 
offers us, and not oppose every performance of his 
works which would give us the means of appre- 
ciating them. 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 239 



CHAPTER XIV. 

The Drama in Spain. 1867. 

If an old hunter is harnessed to a chaise he 
will trot along quietly enough, careless of the in- 
dignity, submitting like a philosopher to his altered 
condition in life; but he must not hear the hounds, 
nor see the scarlet coats: no, that is more than 
equanimous horseflesh can bear: it fires the old 
spirit, and away he dashes, chaise and all, over 
brook and over fence, through field, through mire, 
straining, snorting, quivering, in a wild excitement 
which brings back to him the days of his youth. 

It is somewhat thus with the old play-goer. He 
may be invalided, and relapse meekly enough into 
the philosopher meditating on the amusements in 
which he ceases to participate. He becomes quite 
at his ease respecting "invitations." No array of 
terms can express how little his anxiety points in 
the direction of "At homes." Balls leave him in- 
sensible to their attractions. Lectures and enter- 
tainments placard their allurements in vain. I have 



2 J r ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

known him even resist a sermon. But the sight of 
a playbill always sends a quiet, pleasurable shock 
through his nervous system, awakening semi-desires, 
which only prudence (aided by a well founded 
suspicion that the promise of a playbill is a snare) 
suppresses before they become complete desires. 
He never quite forgets the footlights; never out- 
lives his interest in that scene of dingy splendour, 
that prosaic fairyland. No amount of bad acting 
or bad writing altogether disabuses him; he still 
keeps a little corner of faith in possible enjoyment, 
and every new name is to him as the herald of a 
new delight. Hence the irresistible influence of a 
foreign playbill. All its promises are credible. 
The leading performers are by a plastic imagina- 
tion transfigured into representatives of the ideal. 
The lover has not pink eyelids and heterogeneous 
legs. The interesting heroine is neither mincing 
nor impudent. The light comedian is airy, the 
low comedian humorous: — 

Hope rules a land for ever green ! 

I had been carefully absenting myself from 
theatres for some time, having been given to under- 
stand that London playhouses were not sanatoria; 
but the sight of a Spanish playbill kindled the 
smouldering embers into a flame. I had just 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 2\\ 

quitted the sands at St. Sebastian, after seeing a 
sunset of indescribable beauty, and turned into the 
narrow streets of that unimpressive town to make 
a first acquaintance with "las Cosas de Espana," 
when a small green placard affixed to one of the 
walls arrested my eye with "Teatro" in modest 
caps. Approaching it, I read that an "original y 
magnifica comedia en tres actos y en verso," by 
Don Luis Mariano de Larra (one of the most pro- 
lific dramatists of the day), was to be performed 
that 26th of January. The title was suggestive: 
"Oros, Copas, Espadas yBastos" — literally, "Money, 
Cups, Swords, and Sticks;" or to render it more 
significantly, "Diamonds, Hearts, Spades, and 
Clubs." 

Not only was I allured by the promise thus held 
out, as an old play-goer subject to the weakness 
just described, but also as one who five-and-twenty 
years ago had made the Spanish drama a particular 
study, and up to this hour had never had the 
chance of seeing a Spanish play on the stage. St. 
Sebastian is not Madrid, neither is it Seville, nor 
even Barcelona, so that I had no right to expect 
such a performance as would adequately represent 
the art. One does not permit a foreigner to see 
Shakspeare at Ilfracombe, or Sheridan Knowles at 
Ryde. But being tolerably familiar with the acting 

Actors and Ac ling. 1 6 



2^2 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

of English, French, Germans, and Italians, I thought 
even the modest troupe of St. Sebastian would 
afford a glimpse of the national style. Bad acting 
— as I have had occasion to say — is cruelly com- 
mon, and singularly uniform on all stages, actors 
and amateurs being indistinguishable when bad, 
and seemingly modelled all after the same patterns. 
Good acting is also uniform; but with that uni- 
formity, which is derived from the fundamental 
principles of art, there is the great variety of 
national and personal character. The manners and 
bearing of a well-bred gentleman are the same in 
the East as in the West, in the South as in the 
North of Europe; yet each nation has its distinctive 
character; and this is seen even through the uni- 
formity of manner. 

Some of the universal errors are irritating be- 
cause they spring less from inexperience and in- 
competence than from misguided vanity. Why, for 
instance, do actors fail to see the absurdity of not 
looking at the person addressed, as they would 
look in real life? Why is an impassioned lover, 
instead of fixing his eyes on the eyes of his mistress, 
to fix them on the upper boxes, or the side scenes? 
Such a mistake not only disturbs the illusion of 
the spectator, but disturbs the artistic imagination 
of the actor himself by withdrawing it from its. 



The drama in spain. 1867. 243 

direct object. It is because he is thinking of him- 
self and the audience, instead of imaginatively identi- 
fying himself with the character he is representing, 
that his representation is so feeble and confused. 
If he kept his eyes fixed on the eyes of the person 
he is addressing, this alone would hinder his 
thoughts from wandering away from the scene: it 
would give a poise to his imagination; a poise all 
the more needful to him because his artistic feeling 
is feeble; and since spontaneous suggestions fail to 
sustain his imagination, all external aids become 
important. It is an invariable characteristic of 
good actors that they never seem to be conscious 
of the audience, but always absorbed in the world 
of which they represent a part; whereas it is the 
not less invariable characteristic of bad actors that 
they cannot forget themselves and the audience. 

Having disbursed the magnificent sum of six 
reals (eighteenpence) for my stall, I did not anti- 
cipate anything very remarkable in the art of acting. 
It was indeed thoroughly mediocre, but inoffensive, 
and particularly commendable from the absence of 
that exaggeration which — especially on the English 
stage — often renders acting intolerable. The jeune 
premier was handsome and gentlemanly; threw his 
eyes up at the boxes when he was speaking to his 
brother or his mistress; and generally comported 

16* 



2.J4 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

himself after the fashion of jeunes premiers ; but he 
neither forced his voice, nor "took the stage." The 
low comedian was very quiet, and entirely absorbed 
in his part. The two heroines were indeed with- 
out charm, and rolled their eyes as if they hoped 
to make up in that way for any deficiency of talent. 
I left the theatre with the impression that although 
I had not seen good acting, there was great pro- 
bability of the Spanish stage furnishing excellent 
comedians. Taking this St Sebastian troupe as a 
starting-point, one could see that the national taste 
at any rate was healthy, and that whenever an ex- 
ceptional talent presented itself, it would find a 
fitting arena. The organisation required for fine 
acting is exceptional, as we see by the rarity of 
good actors everywhere, in spite of the demand; 
but when it does present itself in England it has to 
contend against a mass of absurd traditions on the 
stage, and a consequent insensibility on the part of 
the public. To the "old stager," and perhaps also 
to the majority of spectators, the quiet demeanour 
of nature appears like "want of force." I have 
heard old and favourite actors object to the Affable 
Hawk of Charles Mathews, on the ground of its 
"wanting weight." The fact is we have been so 
long accustomed to heavy beer and brandied wine, 
that pure hops and grape will not stimulate us; 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 245 

and it is really curious that Southern nations, who 
habitually gesticulate vivaciously, are less given to 
gesticulation on the stage than we, who rarely, ex- 
cept on the stage, make use of our hands for 
expression. 

The Englishman seems in general to know no 
medium between the extreme of apathy and the 
extreme of exaggeration. His passion runs into 
rant, his drollery into grotesqueness; he forces his 
voice, takes the stage, saws the air, and dresses 
hyperbolically. The low comedian who respects 
himself and his art, and who seeks effects by quiet 
drollery rather than by incongruities of costume 
and outrageous manner, is apt to find the general 
public tepid in its admiration; and stands but a poor 
chance against the farcical exaggerations of his rivals 

On the Spanish stage I saw nothing of this 
coarse buffoonery and ranting violence. Even at 
St. Sebastian, in the farce, obviously from the 
French, which followed the comedy, and which 
the play-bill announced as "chistosissima," or 
"screaming," there was the same absence of 
turbulent exaggeration. The fun, such as it was, 
came from words and looks, not from incongruities 
of costume, or distortions of face and person. 
It was the same at Barcelona. It was the same 
at Seville. What has been sneeringly termed the 



246 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

"drawing-room style" everywhere prevails. I do 
not think it inferior to the "barn style." If the 
prose of daily life is to be represented on the stage, 
only such an elevation of the style as is demanded 
by the laws of stage perspective should be adopted; 
if the scene be poetical a greater elevation is re- 
quired; but in either case the fundamental condition 
is that of representing life; and all obvious violations 
of the truths of life are errors in art. Prose on 
the stage is not to be spoken exactly as in the 
street. Verse is not to be spoken as prose. The 
natural way of speaking prose or verse is that which, 
while preserving the requisite elevation, never allows 
us to feel that it is unusual. It is indeed speaking 
— not mouthing, 

In the comedy "Oros, Copas, Espadas y Bastos," 
there was a demand made upon the performers 
which could not safely be made upon any London 
troupe, namely, that of representing a "coat-and- 
waistcoat comedy" in verse. The short, tripping 
verse of the Spanish drama, interspersed with rhymed 
passages, had to be delivered with the ease of 
prose. There was, indeed, here and there a little 
tendency to over-accentuate the rhythm, but gene- 
rally it was easily delivered. Imagine a comedy in 
blank verse at the Haymarket! 

On the whole, my first experience of Spanish 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 247 

acting was encouraging, and I looked forward to 
Seville and Madrid with great eagerness. Between 
the comedy and the farce there was the invariable 
dance, "bayle nacional," which the Spaniards seem 
to consider as necessary a part of the entertainment 
as a "comic song" used to be (happily used to be) 
with us. On this occasion a tarentella was danced 
by the very fattest female in pink that I ever saw 
dancing; she flitted about with a certain flopulent 
energy startling to behold, and was loudly applauded 
by her admirers. Her male companion had the 
aspect of a wiry dingy waiter, very lithe, very agile, 
and not at all beautiful to look on. 

Don Luis Mariano de Larra is a prolific and 
popular dramatist, and his comedy, "Oros, Copas, 
Espadas y Bastos," seemed to be entertaining the 
audiences of every town we entered. I thought 
it rather dull on a first acquaintance: but as the 
acting was not remarkable, and as my ears were 
not sufficiently familiarised with the language to 
enable me to follow the dialogue closely enough to 
catch its wit and felicity, I bought the book, and 
read it before again seeing it performed at Barce- 
lona — where, by the way, it was less well acted 
than at St. Sebastian. The reader may perhaps 
like to have some account of this comedy, which 
delights the audiences of to-day. 



248 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

The scene opens in the salon of Dona Eduvigis 
in Madrid. That lady is discussing the subject of 
marriage with her daughters Carmen and Rosa, the 
former being a resolute man-hater, the latter a 
sprightly damsel who has just quitted her convent, 
regarding men as agreeable animals with whiskers 
and watch-chains — 

Unos seres con gaban 
y bigotes y reloj — 

whose business it is to make love to women, as 
women's business is to be made love to. Rosa 
says that when she was in the convent sister Maria 
always spoke of man as a venomous animal with 
large claws, whose sole occupation was the des- 
truction of damsels, and that the unfortunate girl 
who looked at or listened to him was turned into 
a pillar of salt. "I left the convent," Rosa adds, 
"saw men, and listened to them, but was neither 
torn by their claws, nor turned into a pillar of 
salt. So they all please me, and some please me 
particularly — 

Por eso me gustan todos . . . 
y algunos me gustan mas. " 

The old lady sees a bad time of it before her, 
with one daughter detesting men too much, and 
the other detesting them too little; the more so as 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 249 

a rich uncle has recently departed from this life 
(and Ceylon), leaving his property to the man- 
hating niece, on condition of her espousing one of 
her four cousins; and, in the event of her refusal, 
the money is to go to a hospital. The four cousins 
have been invited by public advertisement to present 
themselves this very day. 

Old as this idea is, the contrast of the two girls 
and the scope for variety of character in the four 
cousins are good opportunities for a clever dra- 
matist. But comedy demands two things in which 
Spain has always been poor — wit and character. 
Of the wit in the present piece all I will say is that 
it is not sparkling. Of the character- drawing you 
may judge from the following analysis. By an 
almost inconceivable disregard of verisimilitude the 
author has made the four cousins, quite needlessly, 
brothers; yet, not only are these brothers men of 
wholly different temperaments and character, but 
of different nationalities — one is Andalusian, another 
Arragonese, a third Castilian. This is thought to 
be effective contrast! Don Luis is a cavalry officer, 
proud of his profession, and especially of — 

las magnificas glorias Espanolas. 

He cites with approval the mot of his captain, 
that you may scent a good soldier at a league's 
distance — 



250 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

que al buen soldado hay que olerle 
desde una legua. 

Whereupon Carmen, who has ironically assured 
him that his air reveals him to be a dragoon, replies: 
"It is not, then, singular, that I smelt you." 

I ought to have stated that after a tedious talk 
between the three women Carmen is left alone, 
and Don Luis entering, asks if he is in the house of 
Dona Eduvigis, announcing that he presents him- 
self in compliance with the request published in 
the newspapers, and is anxious to know why he is 
summoned. This gives him an opportunity of ex- 
hibiting his character. But the author's notion of 
exhibiting character is to make each person de- 
scribe himself. Don Luis is attracted by Carmen's 
beauty, but piqued by her epigrams. She quits 
him to inform her mother of his arrival, and leaves 
the scene free for the entrance of a second cousin, 
Casto, who represents the "cups" as Luis represents 
the "swords" of the title. Casto is a sort of 
FalstarT of private life, that is, having Falstaff's fat 
and gulosity, without his wit. The drollery of his 
part is meant to lie in the fact of his carrying a 
wine-flask in his pocket, from which in moments of 
doubt and timidity he draws inspiration and courage. 
He is especially timid in the presence of women. 

Having thus presented two of the lovers, the 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 25 1 

author now again brings Rosa forward. Luis is 
struck with her beauty, but taken aback by her 
simplicity when, in answer to some commonplace 
gallantry, she says, "How delightful! And shall we 
be married quickly?" he gravely checks her and 
says that her fifteen years excuse the ingenuous- 
ness of the question. "Have I said anything false?" 
she asks. "No; but to talk thus of marrying... it 
is what is never mentioned." "But if it is done?" 
Don Luis is nonplussed and refers her to his 
brother Casto, "a grave personage who will better 
explain " But Casto is relieved from the em- 
barrassment by the appearance of Carmen and her 
mother; and, after the compliments of ceremony 
are passed, the two other brothers, Bias and Jose, 
arrive. Bias is an Arragonese, the "clubs" of the 
piece, a rough, plain-spoken, rather brutal fellow. 
Jose is the representative of the "diamonds," one 
who believes in the virtue of money. 

Doila Eduvigis informs them that they are sum- 
moned to her house to hear the will of their uncle, 
which she reads aloud — the main point in which I 
have already mentioned. Carmen then rises and 
addresses them in a frank avowal of her dislike of 
men in general. From childhood, when she had 
to suffer their horrid beards to brush her face, she 
has grown into deeper antipathy to them. If she 



walks in the street she never looks behind to see 
suitors following; if she goes to a ball she refuses 
to dance lest a son of Adam should touch her; if 
they swear that they love her she permits them to 
swear; if they compliment her she is indifferent; 
and thus her bosom has remained tranquil. 



Si voy a la calle 
no quiero mirar 
por si un barbilindo 
mi sigue detras: 
si voy a los bailes, 
renuncio a bailar 
porque no me toque 
un hijo de Adan ; 



si juran que me aman 
los dejo jurar; 
si flores me dicen 
a mi me es igual; 
y de esta manera 
mi pecho se esta 
sin penas, ni llantos 
tranquilo y en paz. 



To this avowal she adds that if no one of them 
can win her consent, she is ready to relinquish the 
inheritance. On her reseating herself, Bias rises 
and bluntly says, "This girl is mad;" and straight- 
way begins to prove that either she does not mean 
what she says, or that her wits are deficient. But 
although his tone is insulting, his argument is ex- 
cessively feeble, and amounts to this, that Carmen 
will grow old, and regret she has not married. The 
servant hereupon announces that lunch is ready, 
and the act feebly ends with this interruption. 

In the second act they are again discovered 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 253 

seated, ready to discuss the important question. 
Bias rises, and in an impertinent speech declares 
his opinion of the mother and her daughters, in 
which there is one charming couplet about Rosa, 
who "feels everything she says, but knows not all 
she feels:" — 

Siente todo lo que dice 
y no sabe lo que siente. 

He then suggests that the four wooers shall honestly 
paint their own portraits for Carmen's choice. Jose 
begins, and with petulant vivacity declares every- 
thing vanity except wealth. Casto succeeds, and, 
patting his huge stomach declares that therein lies 
his joy. To rival Heliogabalus in the digesting of 
huge hams washed down with Malaga is his ambi- 
tion. The verses, with their involved rhymes, in 
which this is expressed are of a buffoonery that ; 
delights the pit. But need a remark be made on 
the incongruity of such burlesque in a coat-and- 
waistcoat comedy, and especially of the inappro- 
priateness of such a presentation of his tastes in 
one who pretends to the hand of a young heiress? 
Luis then rises and avows his military ideal, 
gratuitously adding that constancy is not his fa- 
vourite virtue. What Leporello says of Don Gio- 
vanni is avowed by Luis of himself. 



2 54 0N ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

La rubia para mi no tiene pero ; 
la morena me roba los sentidos ; 
por la andaluza sin cesar me muero 
y por la de Madrid me dan vahidos. 
Alta me gusta, baja me enamora, 
flaca me da placer, gorda me encanta; 
me muero por la triste, cuando llora 
me muero por la alegre, cuando canta. 

Now comes the turn of Bias, who neither loves 
nor gambles, neither drinks nor smokes, but has 
the one defect of irresistible outspokenness. 

"I tell everyone both the good and the evil that 
I see, and as this pleases no one I am always in hot 
water. Let a painted old woman approach me and 
I at once point out the rouge. When I am a man's 
friend I quarrel with the whole world in his de- 
fence; on the contrary, if a man offends me, down 
comes the stick. I hate ceremony and compli- 
ments, never wear gloves, and loathe a dress coat. 
I rarely pass a day without cracking somebody's 
skull. People say (but not one in my hearing) that 
I am a brute; the fact is I am not a stone. If you 
succeed in pleasing me, Carmen, I will tell you 
frankly; if not I shall not marry you. But, observe, 
if we marry, I shall allow no friends or cousins in 
my house. I tolerate no youth 'who has saved 
your life,' nor sentimental signer." 

Carmen then replies. If she marries Jose, he, 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 255 

who thinks only of money, will regard her as a bill 
of exchange; if Casto, he will turn his eyes from 
her to a cutlet; if Luis, she will be jealous of every 
woman; if Bias, she will have to submit to per- 
petual insults; and she therefore begs to decline 
them all. Making a reverence she then retires with 
her mother and Rosa, leaving the four wooers in a 
speechless astonishment, which is rather singular 
after their own presentation of their characters. 
What is to be done? Bias — observe the frank and 
truthful Bias! — suggests that they should severally 
write to renounce their pretensions, and all four 
make furious love to Rosa, the object being to 
excite Carmen's jealousy. Accordingly each writes 
a grossly insulting renunciation. Lots are drawn, 
and Casto has to begin the siege of Rosa's heart. 
Here occurs a scene of farcical extravagance be- 
tween the fat and timid Casto, who has to seek 
courage in the wine flask, and the naive Rosa, who 
is pleased at being made love to even by a FalstafT. 
Carmen enters, and Rosa joyfully announces her 
conquest. "How," asks the angry Carmen, "how 
can you pretend to my hand and make love to 
Rosa?" Casto hereupon, with that singular dis- 
regard of bienseance which runs through the comedy, 
replies, "Because I do not care for you, as this 
letter will explain." He gives her the letter and 



256 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

departs. She reads that her feet are too large, and 
that one leg is longer than the other. Luis enters, 
and at once begins complimenting Rosa, and hand- 
ing Carmen his letter of renunciation. The others 
follow, and the act ends with what would make a 
capital finale for a comic opera — the four brothers 
vowing love to Rosa, each in his characteristic way, 
and the insulted Carmen raging like a lioness. 

The third act, as is usual in comedies, is feeble. 
The two first are not powerful, as the analysis will 
have indicated, but at any rate there is movement 
and a sort of fun, though more in promise than 
performance. In the third act the knot is to be 
untied, and very clumsily it is untied. The brothers 
have packed up their carpet bags and are about to 
depart, when Luis discovers that he loves Rosa, 
and Bias and Carmen discover, to their surprise, 
and the surprise of the spectators, that they also 
love each other. A double marriage is arranged, 
and Jose and Casto remain as they were. 

It will have been seen that in this comedy there 
is neither invention nor dramatic skill. The plot is 
improbable without fantasy, unreal without any 
imaginative glimpses to compensate for its unreality. 
The characters are not even good caricatures. And 
yet there is a certain dramatic intention, which would 
afford really good actors scope for excellent acting. 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 257 

How they play it in Madrid I cannot say, but at 
Barcelona it seemed to me as if the actors laboured 
under an intolerable weight, not feeling themselves 
at all in the characters. At St. Sebastian there was 
more freedom and more fun. 

My first experience of the drama in Spain held 
out an agreeable prospect of really fine acting when 
I should have an opportunity of seeing an important 
troupe; since taking this of St. Sebastian as a 
standard of confessed mediocrity it was natural to 
infer a high standard for Seville and Madrid; but I 
had only faint hopes of seeing good dramas, unless 
indeed fortune favoured me so far as to bring a 
work by Zorilla, Gil y Zarate, or Hartzembusch in 
my way. Alas! French pieces reign in Spain, as in 
England and Germany; and when "native talent" 
does enter the arena it is very much like the pica- 
dor's horse. Spain once furnished Europe with 
plots and situations as Paris does at present; and 
early in the present century there seemed a prospect 
of revival for the Spanish drama. But these hopes 
have died out. France is still without a rival, and 
French pieces, more or less adapted, hold possession 
of all stages. The second piece it was my chance 
to see, "La Buena Alhaja," was too obviously an 
importation from the Boulevards, with only the 
change of Madrid for Paris, and with no omission 

Actors and Acting. 1 7 



258 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

of the distressing "sentiment" which delights the 
Boulevards. At Saragossa "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 
failed to lure me; and at Madrid, during my brief 
stay there, nothing but French pieces could be seen. 
At Malaga there was Italian opera. At Granada I 
could not be tempted to give up the Alhambra by 
moonlight, more glorious each succeeding night, for 
the sake of a third endurance of "Oros, Copas, 
Espadas y Bastos," or for "adaptations." At Cor- 
dova the theatre was said to be miserable. Thus 
Barcelona and Seville were the only cities in which 
I was enabled to extend my experience, and even 
there the opportunities were but slight. 

On the second day after arriving at Barcelona 
I was greatly pleased to find among the various 
theatrical temptations that there was to be a day 
performance at one of the people's theatres of a 
mystery play in the Catalonian dialect — a curious 
mingling of Spanish and French, and so readily in- 
telligible when written that I concluded it would 
not be wholly incomprehensible when spoken. The 
subject was "Los Pastores em Bethelem" ("The 
Shepherds of Bethlehem"). The theatre was a large 
tent, and as the day was hot the breeze that swept 
freely through had a very welcome admission; nor 
was the smallness of the audience so disagreeable 
to us as to the manager, especially since every male 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 259 

from eight to nine years upwards incessantly puffed 
a cigarette; and moreover the flavour of garlic, 
though stronger, is not sweeter than that of the 
rose. There was a very fair orchestra, and a not 
ineffective chorus of angels and demons. The piece 
itself might have been four centuries old. Probably 
it was. Except in the matter of scenery and deco- 
ration, it was precisely the sort of work which we 
find in the Chester and Coventry collections; and 
although I understood extremely little of what the 
two comic peasants said, I could have no doubt 
that their fun was precisely the fun of our ancestral 
clowns. 

In Chapter XII. I have spoken of a performance 
of a mystery at Antwerp, by the Ober Ammergau 
troupe. This was wholly pantomimic, and wholly 
serious. But in the "Shepherds of Bethlehem" we 
had a real drama, with serious and comic acting, 
chorus, and processions. Satan (though given to 
straddling) was very energetic. The Archangel 
Michael was exactly like one of the doll images 
adorning the churches. But both Satan and the 
angel were evidently regarded by the audience with 
earnest awe; and the processions, especially at the 
wedding of Joseph and Mary ("interspersed with 
comic business" from the clowns whose wands did 
not blossom), absorbed them like a religious cere- 

17* 



260 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

mony. On the whole it was an intensely interest- 
ing sight, interesting not only as a relic of the old 
past, but also as an amusement for the people, 
which, while it gratified the dramatic instinct, 
touched their souls to finer issues than could be 
opened by the vast majority of modern plays. Apart 
from their religious suggestions, the scenes repre- 
sented had a pure and poetic significance, which 
can rarely be found in the theatrical performances 
of our days. And greatly as our Puritan rigour 
would be shocked at such representations of sacred 
history, there can be no doubt that on the simple 
Catholic populations they have an elevating effect. 

Of course it was not on such a stage that one 
could expect to see acting. Nevertheless, there was 
one young actress who played with so much spirit 
and feeling and with so little "stage manner" that 
had I been a Spanish manager I should have rescued 
and educated her, confident of her becoming an 
artist. There was, also, one young man whose ideal 
beauty haunts me to this day. I am sorry to say 
he showed no aptitude for the stage, except that of 
being quiet and unaffected; but the mere presence 
of such a lovely head would make the fortune of 
any play. He was of the Italian rather than the 
Spanish type; and might have sat to Giorgione for 
a model. A pale mat complexion, exquisitely sensi- ; 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 26 1 

tive nose and mouth, brown curly hair, and soft 
large eyes, it was just the face we foolishly fancy 
a poet must have — although experience tells us that 
poets are really of quite another mould. 

Apropos of beauty on the stage, I made a re- 
mark on this occasion which was confirmed by sub- 
sequent experience, namely, that the great proof of 
the Spaniards being an unusually handsome people 
is that even the chorus singers, male and female, 
are not hideous (as they mostly are all over Europe), 
but generally good-looking, and often seem to have 
stepped from the canvas of Velasquez. Recall for 
a moment the spectacle presented by the chorus in 
London, Paris, Berlin, Dresden, Milan, Florence! 
Think of the ungracious women and the mouldy 
men who range themselves with open mouths and 
sawing arms, as courtiers, peasants, warriors, and 
hunters! It has often been a matter of speculation 
upon what subtle principle of organic development 
the musical mediocrity, which constitutes the chorus 
singer, is correlated with countenances so removed 
from charm, and with figures so ill-adapted to the 
chisel of Praxiteles. Musical superiority is frequently 
found united with great personal beauty; rarely with 
personal ugliness. But the musical talent which 
rises up to, and not above, the level of the chorus, 
seems to lie in a bodily casket which is not alluring. 



262 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

Not so in Spain; or rather let me keep strictly 
within my experience, and say, not so in Catalonia. 
There the men look like noblemen, and the wo- 
men — 

Avez-vous vu dans Barcelonne 
Une Andalouse au sein bruni, 
Pale, comme un beau soir d'automne? 

I need say no more. 

My next experience of the drama (omitting the 
comic opera, of which more anon) was the most 
unfortunate of all. It was a melodrama, entitled 
"El Hombre de la Selva Negra;" and this Man of 
the Black Forest was assuredly the most tedious of 
all the virtuous proscribed noblemen who have ever 
paraded their misfortunes on the stage. From the 
remorseless length of the unimpassioned dialogue, 
and the paucity of action, I conclude the piece must 
have had a German origin; but even German phlegm 
is fiery compared with the dialogue which a Spanish 
audience listened to, sublimely patient. One finds, 
indeed, that the Spaniard is easily amused. To sit 
idly looking on at anything seems to him sufficient. 
Wrapped in his capa, or his blanket, with a cigarette 
under his nose, the mere aspect of the street or 
promenade is a spectacle; and a procession, show, 
or theatrical performance of any kind comes like 
an excitement. 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 867. 263 

The acting of this dull drama was wholly with- 
out marked ability, but it also had the one requi- 
site of moderation. The gentlemen would have 
disappointed Partridge, for instead of taking the 
stage like actors they moved and spoke like gen- 
tlemen; and the villain would by no means have 
gained the suffrage of our critics who believe they 
praise the actor of Iago when they say, "He looked 
the villain" — that being precisely the thing Iago 
should not look. It is on this moderation and 
truthfulness that one may ground a belief in the 
excellence of Spanish acting. Moderation brings 
with it the defect of tameness, no doubt; but even 
this defect is more tolerable in itself than exaggera- 
tion, and is less destructive to the art. I must ad- 
mit the majority of those actors whom I chanced 
to see were deficient in mimetic power and the 
sharply denned individuality which characterises the 
artist; but not one of them was offensive, and one 
was of memorable excellence. This one was a per- 
former in a comic opera, or zarzuela, poor enough 
as a singer, but representing a timid and perplexed 
old nobleman with a richness of humour and signi- 
ficance of look and gesture that recalled Potier and 
FarrerL He was the "one bright particular star" 
whom it was my luck to see. Not that he held an 
important position on the stage, but simply because 



264 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

in him the real mimetic faculty which constitutes 
the actor was allowed its unperverted play. And 
after seeing him I was strengthened in my expecta- 
tions of what Seville and Madrid would offer. 

Alas! Seville offered me nothing but gentlemanly 
tameness in a poetic drama, "UnValledeLagrimas," 
of which I have already forgotten everything, and 
a farce, which may be ascribed as "Box and Cox" 
with all the fun eviscerated; and Madrid, as I have 
already stated, offered nothing but poor French 
pieces, which failed to tempt me. 

Whether there are at present any fine actors in 
Spain I know not, though it is eminently probable. 
At any rate one feels the steady conviction that the 
Spanish stage is an excellent arena for the display 
of genuine art, whenever the artist presents himself. 
Unhappily the art seems in decadence there, as 
elsewhere. The national drama has almost ceased 
to exist. There is no Zorilla, no Hartzembusch 
now working for the stage. And, apropos of the 
latter writer, let me direct the attention of any in- 
genious playwright who can read Spanish to the 
very effective drama "La Vida por Honra," which 
would, indeed, require alteration to suit it to our 
stage, but which presents fine situations and fine 
"parts" such as a dramatist might make good 
use of. 



THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. 1 86 7. 265 

The zarzuela is the national opera (modelled, 
indeed, on the French opera comique, and having 
the same latitude of range), Spanish musicians 
working with Spanish librettists, and interpreted by- 
Spanish singers. The two specimens I saw were 
lively and entertaining; one of them, the "Conquista 
de Madrid," I saw twice, and, in the dearth of 
agreeable operas, venture to direct the attention of 
our managers to it. Compared with such jingle as 
Flotow's "Martha," this "Conquista de Madrid" is 
a work of inspiration. It has a good tenor part, a 
soprano and contralto, a fine part for the barytone, 
and an effective second tenor. Animated and 
piquante the music certainly is; and if not very- 
original, at any rate it keeps out of the Italian and 
German ruts. 



266 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 



CHAPTER XV. 

First Impressions of Salvini. 1875. 

I cannot pretend to form an estimate of Salvini. 
A few years ago I saw him at Genoa in a coat-and- 
waistcoat comedy by Scribe (a version of "La Ca- 
lomnie"), and was persuaded that he would be well 
worth seeing in tragedy. This summer I have seen 
him twice in "Othello," once in the "Gladiator," 
and twice in "Hamlet." But this is not enough for 
a critical estimate; and I will therefore only set 
down first impressions. 

His performances at Drury Lane have excited 
an enthusiasm that recalls the early days of Kean 
and Rachel; an enthusiasm which, of course, has 
been opposed by some fierce antagonism on the 
part of those who are unaffected by his passion, or 
who dislike his interpretation. It is always so. But 
for the most part there has been an acknowledg- 
ment of Salvini's great qualities as an actor, even 
from those who think his conception of Othello 
false. My object here is less to consider his insight 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SALVINI. 1 875. 267 

into Shakspeare than his art as an actor. The ques- 
tion of his artistic skill is one which can be reduced 
to definite and intelligible principles. The question 
of insight is one which fluctuates amid the inde- 
finiteness of personal taste and experience, com- 
plicated by traditional views, and only in rare cases 
capable of being fortified by reference to indisput- 
able indications of the text. Thus whether Shak- 
speare paints Othello as a fiery and sensual African, 
superficially modified by long contact with Euro- 
peans, or as one with a native chivalry towards wo- 
man who is led to marry Desdemona less from lust, 
than from the gratitude of an elderly warrior to- 
wards a sympathetic maiden who naively expresses 
her admiration, may be left for each person to settle 
as he pleases; evidence may be cited in support of 
either view; as evidence may be cited to prove that 
Othello was "not easily jealous," or that he was 
very groundlessly jealous. I remarked on a previous 
page the great uncertainty in which Hamlet's mad- 
ness is left; but whether Shakspeare meant him to 
be mad, or feigning madness, nothing can be less 
equivocal than the indications of a state of cerebral 
excitement in speech and conduct, and this the 
actor ought to represent. 

These two examples point out the different at- 
titudes which criticism must take with regard to 



268 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

the actor's interpretation. In the first case the critic 
is impertinent if he thrusts forward his reading of 
the text as that which the actor is bound to follow; 
the more so when a little reflection should suggest 
a modest hesitation as to whether on the whole the 
actor who has given long and continuous study to 
the part in all its details, and with mind alert to 
seize every hint, and settle every intonation, is not 
more likely to be right, than one who has had no 
such pressing motive, and whose conception of the 
part has been formed fitfully from occasional read- 
ings, or occasional visits to the theatre. In the 
second case, the critic has the plain indications of 
the text which he can say the actor has disregarded; 
that is a question which can be argued on definite 
and intelligible principles. No actor is to be 
blamed for not presenting your conception of 
Hamlet, Othello, or Macbeth; but he is justly blamed 
when he departs from the text such as all men 
understand it. You may not think that Othello 
was a man of fierce animal passion, but you know 
that Othello ' stabbed himself, and did not cut his 
throat. 

It is not therefore Salvini's reading of " Othello " 
that I shall touch upon, so much as the skill with 
which his reading is personated. I went to the first 
performance prepared by long familiarity with the 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SALVINI. 1875. 269 

play, and biassed by very vivid recollections of 
Edmund Kean; and came away with the feeling 
that although in certain passages manifestly inferior 
to Kean, the representation as a whole was of more 
sustained excellence. 

His noble bearing, and the subtle music of his 
varied declamation in the scene before the senate, 
and the play of expression while Brabantio accuses 
him, — when Desdemona appears, — and when she 
replies to the Doge, were confirmations of my high 
expectation. Here it was evident that the primary 
requisites of the art were in his power. He had 
vocal and facial expression. It is only those ac- 
customed to critical analysis who have the least 
idea of the rarity of these two qualities, especially 
the former. While everyone understands that it is 
a primary requisite in a singer that he should not 
only have a voice, but know how to sing; very few 
seem to suspect that it is not less a primary re- 
quisite in an actor that he should know how to 
speak. The consequence is that very few actors do 
know how to speak, and scarcely any of them can 
speak verse. 

In the scene at Cyprus, whatever objections 
might be urged against the kind of passion he ex- 
presses, there could be no doubt respecting the 
truth with which it was expressed. I did not think 



270 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

his dismissal of Cassio good. The memory of 
Kean here obtruded itself. But the temptation 
scene, from first to last, was a magnificent display 
of the resources of his art. The subtle and varied 
expression of uneasiness growing into haggard grief, 
— desiring to learn all that was in Iago's mind, yet 
dreading to know it, — trying to conceal from him 
the effect of his hints, and more and more losing 
all control, — could not have been more artistically 
truthful. It was profoundly tragic, because pro- 
foundly natural. He gave a novel and felicitous 
interpretation to the passage "Excellent wretch! 
perdition catch my soul but I do love thee, and 
when I love thee not" — here a momentary pause 
was followed by a gesture which explained the 
words "chaos is come again," — the world vanishing 
into chaos at such a monstrous state of feeling. 
The "Farewell the tranquil mind" was not com- 
parable to the deep, manly, and impersonal pathos 
of Kean (I will explain the epithet presently) , and 
it seemed to me over acted; the same remark ap- 
plies to the "Had it pleased heaven to rain afflic- 
tion on me." I missed, also, the fiery intensity of 
Kean's "Blood, Iago, blood" and "I'll tear her to 
pieces," and his searching tenderness in "Oh the 
pity of it, Iago." But the whole house was swept 
along by the intense and finely graduated culmina- 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SALVINI. 1 875. 2J 1 

tion of passion in the outburst, "Villain, be sure 
you prove, &c," when seizing Iago and shaking him 
as a lion might shake a wolf, he finishes by fling- 
ing him on the ground, raises his foot to trample 
on the wretch — and then a sudden revulsion of 
feeling checks the brutality of the act, the gentleman 
masters the animal, and with mingled remorse and 
disgust he stretches forth a hand to raise him up. 
I remember nothing so musically perfect in its 
tempo and intonation, so emotionally perfect in ex- 
pression, as his delivery of this passage — the fury 
visibly growing with every word, his whole being 
vibrating, his face aflame, the voice becoming more 
and more terrible, and yet so completely under 
musical control that it never approached a scream. 
Kean was tremendous in this passage; but Salvini 
surpassed him. 

In the fourth act he was also fine, But I missed 
the evidence of what (at page 20) I called the ground- 
swell of subsiding passion. After the dread con- 
viction of Desdemona's guilt has once entered his 
soul, Othello can never for a moment pass from 
out of the shadow of that calamity. He may force 
himself to appear calm — but the calmness should 
be shown to cover a deep wrath and woe. I did 
not feel this in Salvini's calmness. But how fine 
his sarcasm, and his shrinking from Desdemona's 



2^2 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

approach! with what a shudder of disgust he quits 
Emilia! 

In the fifth act my admiration ceased. Except 
the passionate cry when he learns Desdemona's in- 
nocence, and the dreadful way in which he paces to 
and fro, like a lion in his den, before he murders 
her, I remember little in this act which satisfied 
me. The frequent objections that have been urged 
respecting the melodramatic introduction of thunder 
and lightning, and his using a short scimitar to cut 
his throat, instead of a dagger to stab himself, 
weigh but little. The lightning had better have 
been omitted; and the attempt at "local colour" 
with the scimitar, was a twofold mistake — in the 
first place it is in contradiction with the text, in the 
second place not half a dozen of the audience 
could be expected to know that stabbing was not 
an Oriental mode of suicide. But even admitting 
all that has been said against the "gross realism" 
of the dying struggles, it would only constitute one 
defect in an "act which seemed to me to sin in far 
deeper respects. My objection to Salvini's fifth act 
is that it is underfelt and overacted; or let me say 
it seemed to me mistakenly conceived, and did not 
impress me as having the guidance of consistent emo- 
tion; it therefore erred as all acting must err under 
such circumstances, trying to replace a massive 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SALVINI. 1 875. 2J 3 

effect by a multiplicity of varied effects. We ob- 
serve this also in writers who having no inward im- 
pulse of emotion, or no conviction, seek effects 
from the outside; they endeavour to dazzle or per- 
suade by artifices, and 

Hide by ornament the want of art. 

Salvini's Othello, in this act, was not a man 
who has resolved on killing his wife as a solemn 
sacrifice. There was nothing of the dread calm of 
a supreme resolve. He alternately raged and blub- 
bered — and was never pathetic. 

And here I may recur to what was touched on 
just now, the deficiency of pathos in his acting. 
His pathetic tones are not searching: there are no 
tears in his voice; instead of that he is unplea- 
santly tearful — which is a totally different thing. 
Tragic pathos to be grand should be impersonal. 
Instead of our being made to feel that the sufferer 
is giving himself up to self-pity, we should be 
made to see in his anguish the expression of a 
general sorrow. The tragic passion identifies its 
suffering with the suffering of mankind. The hero 
is presented less as moaning over his lot, exclaim- 
ing: "I am so miserable!" than as moaning over 
his and the common lot, exclaiming: "O, this 
misery!" Even in daily life you may observe that 

Actors and Acting. 1 8 



274 0N ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

sympathy with grief is apt to be somewhat checked 
when the sufferer is greatly preoccupied with the 
calamity as his: the more he pities himself the less 
you pity him. Grief, however intense, however 
wild in its expression, when borne with a sense of 
its being part of our general heritage, excites the 
deepest sympathy; we feel most keenly for the suf- 
ferer in feeling with him. 

I cannot say that I much enjoyed "The Gladia- 
tor." There were one or two fine moments, and 
the performance was interesting as showing Salvini 
in a very different light, showing how artistically 
he endeavoured to personate — that is to speak 
through the character. Nothing could be more un- 
like his Othello. But it seemed to me that all the 
defects noticeable in the Othello were exaggerated 
in the Gladiator; and the over-acting and self-pity 
left me cold. The main cause of this was doubt- 
less the absence of any genuine dramatic material 
to work upon. The play is contemptible — a succes- 
' sion of conventional "motives," such as seduce 
feeble writers who vainly imagine they can be 
effective by heaping situation on situation, robing 
their characters in all the frippery of the stage. 
One may say of the play, and of Salvini's acting, 
what Johnson said of a poem when Boswell asked 
him if it had not imagination: "No sir, there is in 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SALVINI. 1 875. 275 

it what ivas imagination once." Salvini showed us 
what had been dramatic expression; and so power- 
ful is his mastery, that many spectators accepted 
the conventional signs; just as many readers ac- 
cept for poetry the splendid images and poetic 
thoughts which inferior writers gather from other 
writers far and wide, instead of expressing poetical 
feelings of their own. 

I do not blame Salvini for not having interested 
me in the Gladiator, for I do not think that any 
actor could have succeeded with such a patchwork. 
But I must blame his overacting — the apparent 
determination to get a multiplicity of effects out of 
materials which might have been more simply and 
massively presented. An illustration may be cited 
from his first scene. In telling the hideous history 
of his child, ripped from its mother's womb, he 
turned the narrative into a dramatised presentation, 
going so far as to repeat the words of the sorceress 
in high womanly tones. In his gestures there is 
always an excess in this direction; an excess which 
would not be felt indeed by Italians, since they are 
much given to what may be called pictorial gesture; 
but I cannot think it consistent with fine art, being 
as it is a remnant of the early stages of evolution, 
wherein gesture is descriptive, and not, as in the 
higher stages, symbolical: it bears the same relation 

18* 



276 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

to the expressive gestures of cultivated minds, that 
picture-writing bears to the alphabet. 

With this qualification, and considering him as 
an Italian, Salvini's gestures are fine, though, to my 
thinking, redundant. His tones and looks — the 
actor's finest gestures — are singularly varied and 
effective. 

My disappointment at his performance of the 
Gladiator abated my expectations of his Hamlet, 
for which part his physique so obviously ill-fitted 
him. Yet here — because he had again genuine 
dramatic material to work upon — the actor's art 
was once more superbly shown. It was not Shak- 
speare's Hamlet, one must admit; the many-sidedness 
of that strange character was sadly truncated — the 
wit, the princely gaiety which momently plays over 
the abiding gloom, the vacillating infirmity of 
purpose, the intellectual over-activity, were "con- 
spicuous by their absence." The play had been 
cut down to suit Italian tastes. Nevertheless I think 
of all the Hamlets I have seen, Salvini's is the least 
disappointing. Of all that I have seen, it has the 
greatest excellences. The scenes with the Ghost 
erred I think psychologically in depicting physical 
terror rather than metaphysical awe; but this is the 
universal defect; and Salvini's terror was finely ex- 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SALVINI. 1 875. 277 

pressed. The soliloquies were quiet, and were real 
soliloquisings, except that every now and then too 
much was italicised and painted out: so that he 
seemed less one communing with himself, than one 
illustrating his meaning to a listener. The scene 
with Polonius, "Words, words," was so admirable 
that it deepened regret at the mutilation of the text 
which reduced this aspect of Hamlet to a transient 
indication. The scene with Ophelia was a revela- 
tion. Instead of roaring and scolding at her like 
other actors, with a fierce rudeness which is all the 
more incomprehensible that they do not represent 
Hamlet as mad, Salvini is strange, enigmatical, but 
always tender; and his "To a nunnery go" is the 
mournful advice of a broken-hearted lover, not the 
insult of a bully or angry pedagogue. This tender- 
ness, dashed with insurgent reproaches, runs through 
the interview with his mother; and the most pathetic 
tones I have heard him utter were in the broken 
huskiness of his entreaties to her to repent. The 
growing intensity of emotion during the play- scene 
culminates in a great outburst of triumphant 
rage as he wildly flings into the air the leaves of 
the manuscript he has been biting a second before, 
and falls exhausted on Horatio's neck. No one 
who witnessed that truthful expression of powerful 
emotion could help regretting the excision of so 



278 ON ACTORS AND THE ART OF ACTING. 

many passages of "wild and whirling words" in 
which Hamlet gives vent to his cerebral excitement. 

Powerful and truthful also was his acting in the 
scene where he catches the King at prayer. But 
dull beyond all precedent was the talk at Ophelia's 
grave! The close was magnificent. No more 
pathetic death has been seen on the stage. Among 
its many fine touches there was the subtle invention 
of making the dying Hamlet draw down the head 
of Horatio to kiss him before sinking into silence : 
which reminds one of the "Kiss me, Hardy," of the 
dying Nelson. And this affecting motive was re- 
presented by an action as novel ^s it was truthful — 
namely, the uncertain hand blindly searching for 
the dear head, and then faintly closing on it with 
a sort of final adieu. 

There are two points which struck me as lessen- 
ing the effect of this otherwise rare performance: 
the first was a tearful tendency, sometimes amount- 
ing almost to a whining feebleness; the second, 
nearly connected with this, was a want of perfect 
consistency in the presentation. There was a dis- 
sonance between the high plaintive tones, and the 
massive animal force, both of person and voice — 
it was an operatic tenor, or un beau tenebreux, 
grafted on the tragic hero: an incongruous union 
of the pretty with the grand. 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SALVINI. 1 875. 279 

But I am only noting first impressions, and I 
will not by insisting on faults seem ungrateful to 
the great artist, who has once more proved to us 
what the art is capable of. Make what deductions 
you please — and no artist is without his compara- 
tive deficiencies — you must still admire the rare 
qualities of the tragedian. He has a handsome 
and eminently expressive face, graceful and noble 
bearing, singular power of expressing tragic passion, 
a voice of rare beauty, and an elocution such as 
one only hears once or twice in a lifetime: in the 
three great elements of musical expression, tone, 
timbre, and rhythm, Salvini is the greatest speaker 
I have heard. 



THE END. 



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